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The 2021 federal election in Germany was very different from previous elections. For the first time, the environmental party, The Greens, ran a candidate for chancellor. In addition, the election campaign was increasingly digital due to the Corona pandemic. Citizens increasingly turned to the internet for information. In this context, Facebook was the most used social network for reading, sharing, and discussing political news. This paper examines the Green Party's use of Facebook during the election campaign to identify characteristics of their communication behaviour and user reactions. The empirical investigation is carried out by means of a qualitative content analysis according to Mayring. In the period from 01/04 to 26/09/2021 a total of 251 posts of the Green Party were analysed. The tool Fanpage Karma was used for this purpose. Based on the number of posts, relevant topics of the online election campaign were identified. We also looked at how often and with which reactions users responded to the party's posts. The results of the study show that the 2021 chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock plays a prominent role. She is mentioned in 30.68% of all posts. In addition, environmental policy, the party's core issue, takes up a comparatively large amount of space with a total of 111 posts (44.22%). Of these, 39.84% deal with climate-related issues. The results of the analysis also show that the party has a broader range of topics. Social issues are mentioned in 38.65% of the posts and the image of being a ‘single-issue party’ is being shed to some extent. It can also be seen that The Greens, who are among the winners of the 2021 election, publish a comparatively low number of posts. At the same time, they receive the second-most ‘Love’ reactions, and the most ‘Loves’ per post. The study shows Facebook's status in the online election campaign of the German environmental party in the 2021 federal election. It provides information about the scope of use and topic setting on the social platform. At the same time, the results show to what extent and with what reactions the posts have been addressed.

This paper considers depictions of politicians as servants of the Dark Side in political cartoons and political satire comic books from 2015-2020. Particular attention is given to images of Donald Trump as Darth Vader. The use of such pop culture references provides what Morris (1993) called “domestication” – the conversion of abstract ideas into concrete ones, unfamiliar people to familiar ones, and/or distant events to close ones. Guided by the interaction view of metaphor offered by the philosopher Max Black, this paper will discuss how different audiences may decode Dark Side allusions in political satire differently and, significantly, how the domestication of public figures like Donald Trump as Darth Vader and Darth Sidious may result in greater public acceptance of egregious political acts.

The default mode network (DMN) typically exhibits deactivations during demanding tasks compared to periods of relative rest. In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of episodic memory encoding, increased activity in DMN regions even predicts later forgetting in young healthy adults. This association is attenuated in older adults and, in some instances, increased DMN activity even predicts remembering rather than forgetting. It is yet unclear whether this phenomenon is due to a compensatory mechanism, such as self-referential or schema-dependent encoding, or whether it reflects overall reduced DMN activity modulation in older age. We approached this question by systematically comparing DMN activity during successful encoding and tonic, task-independent, DMN activity at rest in a sample of 106 young (18-35 yrs) and 111 older (60-80 yrs) healthy participants. Using voxel-wise multimodal analyses, we assessed the age-dependent relationship between DMN resting-state amplitude (mean percent amplitude of fluctuation, mPerAF) and DMN fMRI signals related to successful memory encoding, as well as their modulation by age-related hippocampal volume loss, while controlling for regional grey matter volume. Older adults showed lower resting-state DMN amplitudes and lower task-related deactivations. However, a negative relationship between resting-state mPerAF and subsequent memory effect within the precuneus was observed only in young, but not older adults. Hippocampal volumes showed no relationship with the DMN subsequent memory effect or mPerAF. Lastly, older adults with higher mPerAF in the DMN at rest tend to show higher memory performance, pointing towards the importance of a maintained ability to modulate DMN activity in old age.

Memory-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activations show age-related differences across multiple brain regions that can be captured in summary statistics like single-value scores. Recently, we described two single-value scores reflecting deviations from prototypical whole-brain fMRI activity of young adults during novelty processing and successful encoding. Here, we investigate the brain-behavior associations of these scores with age-related neurocognitive changes in 153 healthy older adults. All scores were associated with episodic recall performance. The memory network scores, but not the novelty network scores, additionally correlated with medial temporal gray matter and a composite measure comprising pro-active inhibition, episodic memory, tonic alertness, flexibility, and working memory. Our results thus suggest that novelty-network-based fMRI scores show high brain-behavior associations with episodic memory and that encoding-network-based fMRI scores additionally capture individual differences in global cognitive function. More generally, our results suggest that single-value scores of memory-related fMRI provide a comprehensive measure of individual differences in network dysfunction that may contribute to age-related cognitive decline.

Purpose Effects of antibiotic administration on patients’ microbiome may negatively influence cancer outcomes, and adverse prognoses after antibiotic application have been demonstrated for cancer patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors. While the microbiome may play an important role also in head-and-neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), the prognostic value of antibiotic treatment here is largely unknown. We therefore analyzed whether antibiotic prescription is associated with impaired oncological outcomes of HNSCC patients undergoing definitive (chemo)radiation. Methods A cohort of 220 HNSCC patients undergoing definitive (chemo)radiation between 2010 and 2019 was analyzed. The influence of antibiotic administration on locoregional control, progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) was determined using Kaplan–Meier and Cox analyses. Results A total of 154 patients were treated with antibiotics within 30 days before (chemo)radiation (pretherapeutic) or during (chemo)radiation (peritherapeutic). While antibiotic prescription was not associated with age, ECOG, tumor localization or radiotherapy characteristics, patients treated with antibiotics had significantly higher tumor stages. Peritherapeutic antibiotic administration diminished PFS (HR = 1.397, p p p p Conclusion Peritherapeutic antibiotic usage was associated with impaired oncological outcomes in HNSCC patients undergoing (chemo)radiation. Further studies including microbiome analyses are required to elucidate underlying mechanisms.

Kynurenine, kynurenic and quinolinic acid are important metabolites in tryptophan metabolism. Due to an involvement in glutamatergic neurotransmission and immune response, previous studies have investigated this pathway in mental disorders such as major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BD) or schizophrenia (SCZ). Tryptophan and kynurenine have been shown to be decreased across disorders, hinting at the missing link how inflammation causes neurotoxicity and psychiatric symptoms. The main aim of our study was to investigate if individual catabolites could serve as diagnostic biomarkers for MDD, BD and SCZ. We measured plasma levels of tryptophan, kynurenine, kynurenic acid, quinolinic acid and ratio of quinolinic acid/kynurenic acid using mass spectrometry in n = 175 participants with acute episodes and after remission, compared with controls. Decreased levels of all tryptophan catabolites were found in the whole patient group, driven by the difference between BD and HC. Manic and mixed phase BD individuals displayed significantly lower kynurenine and kynurenic acid levels. We could not find significant differences between disorders. Upon reaching remission, changes in catabolite levels partially normalised. Our data suggests an involvement of the kynurenine pathway in mental disorders, especially BD but disqualifying those metabolites as biomarkers for differential diagnosis.

Nutrient rich wastewater containing emerging organic contaminants was used for struvite synthesis with a novel tandem process with a heterogeneous Fenton oxidation pretreatment.

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Die Diagnostik und Therapie von submandibulär gelegenen Läsionen ist eine Herausforderung. Die häufig vorkommenden Karzinome sollten hinreichend sicher operativ entfernt und gleichsam funktionelle Strukturen zuverlässig geschützt werden. Insbesondere der Erhalt neuronaler Strukturen bei gleichzeitiger Tumorkontrolle lässt einzeitige Konzepte zweckdienlich erscheinen, wenngleich diese nicht hinreichend etabliert sind. Ziel der Studie war die Beurteilung der intraoperativen Schnellschnittdiagnostik als mögliche Grundlage eines einzeitigen chirurgischen Therapiekonzepts und somit die Verhinderung funktioneller Alterationen durch Reoperationen. Methoden Es wurden 114 konsekutive Patient*innen in die Studie eingeschlossen, bei denen nach der HNO-Spiegeluntersuchung und bildgebender Diagnostik die Artigkeit der Läsion nicht zugeordnet werden konnte. Patient*innen mit bekanntem Karzinom in der Vorgeschichte oder Hinweis auf eine akut entzündliche/karzinogene Primärläsion in der HNO- und/oder bildgebenden Untersuchung wurden ausgeschlossen. Es wurde eine intraoperative Schnellschnittdiagnostik mit der Fragestellung nach Vorliegen eines Karzinoms durchgeführt. Patient*innenbezogene Daten sowie die Zuverlässigkeit des Schnellschnittergebnisses wurden vergleichend erfasst. Ergebnisse Bei insgesamt 114 Patient*innen wurde ein intraoperativer Schnellschnitt durchgeführt. Karzinome wurden mit einer Sensitivität von 87 % und einer Spezifität von 100 % diagnostiziert. Die durchgeführte Diagnostik hätte somit dazu geführt, dass in einem einzeitigen Konzept kein Patient unnötig radikal operiert worden wäre. Bei 26 von 30 Patient*innen hätte ein Zweiteingriff vermieden werden können. Schlussfolgerung Die intraoperative Schnellschnittdiagnostik stellt potenziell eine wichtige Methode dar, um Karzinome histologisch zu bestätigen und zweizeitige Vorgehen zu vermeiden. Das Fehlen falsch-positiver Befunde hätte ein unerwünscht radikales Vorgehen bei 100 % der Patient*innen verhindert.