Acquired prosopagnosia (PA) is a rare condition after, for example, a stroke or brain injury. The congenital form of PA is generally considered to be even less common. Beside a few single case reports and anecdotal mentioning of familial cases no data on the epidemiology exists. Following a questionnaire-based screening in local secondary schools and at our medical faculty, candidates suspicious for PA underwent a semi-structured interview followed by examinations of first degree relatives. Among 689 local pupils and medical students of our university we found 17 with congenital PA. This corresponds to a prevalence rate of 2.47% (95% CI 1.31-3.63). The frequency is among the highest known for a monogenic disorder. All those index subjects (n = 14) of the target group who agreed to further examinations of their family members had other first degree relatives with the same cognitive disorder. This study provides epidemiological evidence that congenital PA is a very common cognitive disorder which almost always runs in families. The segregation pattern of this hereditary prosopagnosia (HPA) is fully compatible with autosomal dominant inheritance.

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Background: Assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQL) is important in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Despite the high prevalence of COPD in Germany, Switzerland and Austria there is no validated disease-specific instrument available. The objective of this study was to translate the Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire (CRQ), one of the most widely used respiratory HRQL questionnaires, into German, develop an interviewer-and selfadministered version including both standardised and individualised dyspnoea questions, and validate these versions in two randomised studies.

We report the case of a 27‐year‐old patient with subacute anti‐neurofascin‐155 neuropathy with bifacial palsy, who showed excellent response to rituximab. We provide longitudinal data of established clinical scores, nerve conduction studies, antibody titers, and novel imaging methods (nerve ultrasonography and corneal confocal microscopy). Clinical and electrophysiological improvement followed the reduction of serum antibody titer and correlated with a reduction of corneal inflammatory cellular infiltrates whereas the increase in the cross‐sectional area of the peripheral nerves remained 12 months after first manifestation. Our findings suggest that novel techniques provide useful follow‐up parameters in paranodopathies.

An electrochemical method was used to measure the mass transfer coefficient in packed beds containing spherical particles. The electrochemical reaction was reduction of ferricyanide ions on stainless steel ball bearings in the presence of potassium nitrate supporting electrolyte. The correlation found in this study was ,D = 2.944 Re-0.5~4 / ~ )-~ where 1.8 < Re < 27, 2.98 < L/dp < 7.45, and Sc ----1421. The mass transfer coefficient for randomly packed beds containing up to five different sizes of spheres (0.398-0.952 cm diam) was correlated by the above equation when the average particle diameter was determined by 1 dpm --where dpi is the particle diameter of size i, and xi is the volume (or weight fraction) of particles of size i in the packed bed. It was found that when the bed packing was segregated into two parallel flow zones, each having different particle sizes, then the average mass transfer coefficient was less than the value given by the correlation above.

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