The present thesis is focused on hippo rehabilitation as a novel technique for re-education of adult and child behavior disorders. The work briefly characterizes issues of adult and child behavior disorders and presents how hippo rehabilitation can be used to positively influence their bad behaviour patterns. The importance of social behavior of horses for re-education of behavior disorders is clarified based on the knowledge of the horse Etology during rehabilitation lessons. In the end of the theoretical part, ?American programme? that use mustang horses for re-socialization of prisoners is described and its parallels are implied to hippo rehabilitation. The practical part of the thesis describes a few chosen hippo rehabilitation centers in the Czech Republic and one center in Germany. Therapeutic approaches to individual client needs are discussed. The positive effect of hippo rehabilitation is documented by three attached case studies describing courses of rehabilitation. In conclusion, the chosen courses of rehabilitation are compared.

The aim of this work is to map out the scale and quality of hippo therapeutic and therapy dog services in the Czech Republic, and to evaluate the level of education and professional courses and the level of professional exams needed to provide good quality animal-assisted therapy. Special attention was paid to the financial side of the services provided and to the start-up costs involved including the acquisition of the animals, their training, aids, food and veterinary care.

Augustine has had a large influence on the development of western theology, and nowhere is this more obvious that in Martin Luther's understanding of God, humankind and grace. Yet at the same time there are also significant differences in the two churchmen's thought. Sometimes these differences are subtle, such as their views of the state; other times they are not so subtle, such as their positions on free will or their praise of philosophy and its usefulness in sounding the depth of Christianity. In order to best explain these varying views, one must look at Augustine's and Luther's diverging opinions of man's nature where one will see that the dissimilarities are best understood in light of Luther's pessimistic view of humanity.

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<p>During gestation, the maternal liver undergoes various adaptive changes to cope with the increasing physiological and metabolic demands from both maternal and fetal compartments. Among these changes are robust growth and changes in transcriptome profile. However, how these events happen, and other aspects of this physiological phenomenon remains unexplored. Therefore, we aimed at further understanding how maternal liver responds to pregnancy. We used BrdU labeling combined with a virus-based tracing approach to quantify the percentage of maternal hepatocytes undergoing DNA synthesis and division over the course of gestation in mice. </p> <p>We found that ~50% maternal hepatocytes entered S-phase but, unexpectedly, did not undergo cytokinesis. This strongly suggests that maternal hepatocytes in fact undergo endoreplication instead of hyperplasia, as believed previously. Pericentral Axin2⁺ hepatocytes were reported to behave as liver stem cells responsible for liver homeostasis and turnover. We generated an <i>in vivo</i> fate-tracing mouse model to monitor the behavior of these cells in the maternal liver. Our results showed that they did not proliferate during pregnancy, homeostasis, and following partial hepatectomy. Curiously, we uncovered that, hepatocytes exhibit developmental phenotypes at mRNA level pre-pregnancy and at both mRNA and protein level during pregnancy. In the non-pregnant state, hepatocytes reserved mRNA expression of liver progenitor marker genes <i>Cd133</i> and <i>Afp</i>, which are localized in the nuclei, without protein translation. During gestation, maternal hepatocytes displayed cytoplasmic translocation of <i>Cd133</i> and <i>Afp</i> transcripts, concomitant with corresponding protein expression. </p> <p>Overall, all maternal hepatocytes became CD133⁺, and a subset of them express AFP. Additionally, in non-pregnant livers, mRNA of <i>Epcam</i>, another liver progenitor marker, was expressed within majority of hepatocytes, whereas its protein was solely translated in the pericentral region. In contrast, by end-gestation, EPCAM protein expression switched to the periportal region. These observations indicate that maternal hepatocytes exhibit heterogeneous developmental phenotypes, partially resembling fetal hepatocytes. It is intriguing why mature hepatocytes dedifferentiate into a progenitor state in response to pregnancy. AFP is considered to be produced primarily from fetal liver and thus is used to evaluate fetal development health. </p> A potential clinical relevance of our data is that we identified maternal liver as a new source of AFP. The hippo signaling pathway has been shown to potently control liver growth and hepatocyte heterogenicity. Surprisingly, we found that pregnancy neither altered the expression nor activities of the components of this pathway and its effector YAP1/TAZ. This finding indicates that pregnancy-induced maternal liver growth is not driven by hippo-YAP1 pathway. However, we demonstrate that the presence of YAP1 is essential for CD133 protein expression in maternal hepatocytes. Collectively, we revealed that, as pregnancy advances, maternal hepatocytes likely undergo endoreplication and display developmental phenotypes. Mechanistically, YAP1 dictates the expression of CD133, contributing to the pregnancy-dependent phenotypic changes of maternal hepatocytes.

Hippo signaling is a tumor suppressive signaling pathway that controls organ size by regulating cellular proliferation, apoptosis, and differentiation during development, regeneration, and homeostasis. The Hippo pathway inhibits transcriptional co-activators and Hippo pathway effectors YAP/TAZ, activation of which is often seen in cancer. Within the adult mammalian intestine, homeostasis of which requires intricate reciprocal interaction between the gut epithelium and adjacent mesenchyme, the Hippo-YAP pathway is crucial for intestinal epithelial homeostasis and regeneration. However, its role in adult mesenchymal homeostasis remains poorly understood. Here, I genetically dissect the role of mesenchymal Hippo-YAP signaling in adult intestinal homeostasis. I find that deletion of core kinases LATS1/2 or YAP activation in mesenchymal progenitor cells, but not terminally differentiated cells, disrupts signaling in the stem cell niche and mesenchymal homeostasis by inducing mesenchymal overgrowth and suppressing smooth muscle actin expression. Furthermore, inhibition of Hippo signaling in Gli1+ mesenchymal progenitors, the main source of Wnt ligands within the stem cell niche, stimulates Wnt ligand production and subsequent epithelial Wnt pathway activation, thereby driving epithelial regeneration following DSS-mediated injury as well as exacerbating APC-mediated tumorigenesis. Altogether, our data reveal a previously underappreciated requirement and the underlying mechanism for stromal Hippo-YAP signaling in adult intestinal homeostasis.

Background: The diploma thesis deals with the method of equine facilitated psychiatry and psychology and its use in the treatment of addictions. The theoretical part is the starting point of the whole work. It presents the basic methods of treatment used, the method of Equine facilitated activities and therapies itself and its inclusion in traditional methods of addiction treatment. The research part is based on qualitative data collection. Aims: The aim of the diploma thesis is to describe the use of equine facilitated activities and therapies in residential addiction treatment. Find out how patients and therapists evaluate this method, what areas of life are affected by equine facilitated activities and therapies and how it fits into current treatment methods. Data: The research group consists of eight patients from the addiction treatment department at a psychiatric hospital who met the selection criteria. And two therapists who work with the method of equine facilitated psychiatry and psychology in addicted clients / patients and met the selection criteria. Methods: The chosen type of research was process evaluation. Patients were focused on the focus using a semi-structured interview and a semi-structured interview on the therapists. Results and Conclusion: Research has shown that horses have...

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Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death in the United States. Toll-like receptor (TLR)-mediated pathways have been demonstrated to play a role in myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. We and others have shown that PI3K/Akt signaling is involved in regulating cellular survival and protecting the myocardium from I/R induced injury. In this dissertation, we provide compelling evidence that miR-125b serves to “fine tune” TLR mediated NF-kB responses by repressing TNF-a and TRAF6 expression. We constructed lentiviral expressing miR-125b, delivered it into the myocardium. The data showed that delivery of lentivirus expressing miR-125b significantly reduces myocardial infarct size and improves cardiac function in I/R hearts. Mechanistic studies demonstrated that miR-125b negatively regulates TLR mediated NF-kB activation pathway by repressing TNF-a and TRAF6 expression in the myocardium. We also observed that transfection of the myocardium with lentivirus expressing miR-214 markedly attenuates I/R induced myocardial infarct size and cardiac dysfunction. We demonstrated that miR-214 activates PI3K/Akt signaling by targeting PTEN expression in the myocardium. We also investigated the role of TLR3 in neonatal heart repair and regeneration following myocardial infarction (MI). Wild type (WT) neonatal mice showed fully cardiac functional recovery and small infarct size, while TLR3 deficient mice exhibited impaired cardiac functional recovery and large infarct area after MI. Poly (I:C), a TLR3 ligand, administration significantly enhances glycolysis, YAP1 activation and the proliferation of WT neonatal cardiomyocytes. 2-deoxyglucose (2-DG), a glycolysis inhibitor treatment abolished cardiac functional recovery and YAP1 activation in neonatal mice after MI. In vitro either inhibition of glycolysis by 2-DG or inhibition of YAP1 activation prevents Poly (I:C) induced YAP1 activation and neonatal cardiomyocyte proliferation. Importantly, YAP1 activation increases miR-152 expression, leading to cardiomyocyte proliferation through suppression P27kip1 and DNMT1 expression. We conclude that microRNAs play an important role in TLR modulation induced protection against myocardial I/R injury by increasing the activation of PI3K/Akt signaling pathway, decreasing TLR/NF-kB mediated inflammatory response, and suppressing activation of apoptotic signaling following myocardial I/R injury. In addition, TLR3 is an essential for neonatal heart repair and regeneration after myocardial infarction. TLR3 modulation could be a novel strategy for heart regeneration and repair.

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