Digital (in)equalities and user emancipation: Examining the potential of Adorno's maxim of Mündigkeit for critical intergenerational learning.

The widespread use of mobile technologies has penetrated the lives of people across all age groups with the usage of smartphones and wearables appearing "natural" and without alternatives. The digitalisation of everyday life means that communication and negotiation of social and societal meanings are co-constructed by users and mobile technologies thereby blurring the boundary between on- and off-line as well as social and private spheres. At the same time, the global-market logic that has driven the extent and speed of this social transformation raises questions as to how individuals retain influence and agency over the digital technologies that have come to define both social and private spheres and that surround them at all times. Against this backdrop, this theoretical paper discusses the role of Adorno's maxim of emancipation toward autonomy (Mündigkeit) for education (Erziehung) and critical learning about and living with digital technologies. The paper suggests a way forward through intergenerational learning as a didactical method of enhancing emancipation among younger and older generations of "users" in their joint efforts of becoming critical agents in an age of digitally enhanced data markets.

Considering Situational Variety in Contextualized Aging Research - Opinion About Methodological Perspectives.

Due to the increasingly heterogeneous trajectories of aging, gerontology requires theoretical models and empirical methods that can meaningfully, reliably, and precisely describe, explain, and predict causes and effects within the aging process, considering particular contexts and situations. Human behavior occurs in contexts; nevertheless, situational changes are often neglected in context-based behavior research. This article follows the tradition of environmental gerontology research based on Lawton's Person-Environment-Interaction model (P-E model) and the theoretical developments of recent years. The authors discuss that, despite an explicit time component, current P-E models could be strengthened by focusing on detecting P-E interactions in various everyday situations. Enhancing Lawton's original formula via a situationally based component not only changes the theoretical perspectives on the interplay between person and environment but also demands new data collection approaches in empirical environmental research. Those approaches are discussed through the example of collecting mobile data with smartphones. Future research should include the situational dimension to investigate the complex nature of person environment interactions.

Peripheral primitive neuroectodermal tumor of the thymus.

Peripheral primitive neuroectodermal tumors (pPNET) are an extremely rare disease entity of malignant tumors belonging to the Ewing sarcoma family that usually occur in children and adolescents with a predilection for the truncal and axial soft tissue. Thoracopulmonary manifestation in children mostly involves the chest wall as a large tumorous mass or the posterior mediastinum. In adults these tumors are even more infrequent. We report about a 46-year-old woman with a pPNET of the thymus which infiltrated the pericardium. According to the English literature this is the first reported case both of a thymic pPNET and a pPNET arising in the anterior mediastinum. This illustrates that pPNETs belong to the differential diagnosis of neurogenic mediastinal malignancies not only in the pediatric age population but also in adults and even in so far unknown localizations like the anterior mediastinum.