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Plant-plant interactions change through succession from facilitative to competitive. At early stages of succession, early-colonizing plants can increase the survival and reproductive output of other plants by ameliorating disturbance and stressful conditions. At later stages of succession, plant interactions are more competitive as plants put more energy toward growth and reproduction. In northern temperate rainforests, gap dynamics result in tree falls that facilitate tree regeneration (nurse logs) and bryophyte succession. How bryophyte-tree seedling interactions vary through log succession remains unclear. We examined the relationships of tree seedlings, bryophyte community composition, bryophyte depth, and percent canopy cover in 166 1.0 m 2 plots on nurse logs and the forest floor in the Hoh rainforest in Washington, USA, to test the hypothesis that bryophyte-tree seedling interactions change from facilitative to competitive as the log decays. Tree seedling density was highest on young logs with early-colonizing bryophyte species (e.g., Rhizomnium glabrescens ) and lowest on decayed logs with Hylocomium splendens , a long-lived moss that reaches depths >20 cm. As a result, bryophyte depth increased with nurse log decay and was negatively associated with tree seedling density. Tree seedling density was 4.6× higher on nurse logs than on the forest floor, which was likely due to competitive exclusion by forest floor plants, such as H. splendens . Nurse logs had 17 species of bryophytes while the forest floor had six, indicating that nurse logs contribute to maintaining bryophyte diversity. Nurse logs enable both tree seedlings and smaller bryophyte species to avoid competition with forest floor plants, including the dominant bryophyte, H. splendens . H. splendens is likely a widespread driver of plant community structure given its dominance in northern temperate forests. Our findings indicate that plant-plant interactions shift with succession on nurse logs from facilitative to competitive and, thus, influence forest community structure and dynamics., Competing Interests: Authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Compared to early language development, later changes to the language system during orthography and literacy acquisition have not yet been researched in detail. We present a longitudinal corpus of texts on short picture stories written by German primary school children between grades 2 and 4 and grades 3 and 4. It includes 1,922 texts with 212,505 tokens (6,364 types) from 251 children. For each text, rich metadata is available, including age, grade and linguistic background (at least 60% of the children were multilingual). To our knowledge, our corpus is the largest longitudinal corpus of written texts by children at primary school age. Each word is included in its original spelling as well as in a normalized form (target hypothesis), specifying the intended word form, which we corrected for orthographic but not grammatical errors. Original and target word forms are aligned character-wise and the target word forms are enriched with phonological, syllabic, and morphological information. Additionally, for each target word form, we established key lexical variables, e.g., word frequency or summed bigram frequency, as specified in childLex. Where applicable, we also specify key features of German orthography (e.g., consonant doubling, vowel-lengthening ). Taken together, this information allows for a detailed assessment of the properties of words that tend to increase the likelihood of spelling errors. The corpus is available in different formats-as tab-delimited annotated token and type based lists, in an XML format, and via the corpus search tool ANNIS.

This study investigated subjective biopsychosocial effects of coronary heart disease (CHD), coping strategies and social support in patients undergoing cardiac rehabilitation (CR) and having extensive work-related problems. A qualitative investigation was performed in 17 patients (48.9±7.0 y, 13 male) with extensive work-related problems (SIMBO-C>30). All patients were interviewed with structured surveys. Data analysis was performed using a software that is based on the content analysis approach of Mayring. In regard to effects of disease, patients indicated social aspects including occupational aspects (62%) more often than physical or mental factors (9 or 29%). Applied coping strategies and support services are mainly focused on physical impairments (70 or 45%). The development of appropriate coping strategies was insufficient although social effects of disease were subjectively meaningful for patients in CR., Competing Interests: Interessenkonflikt: Die Autoren geben an, dass kein Interessenkonflikt besteht., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

Introduction: Heparin is known to efficiently attenuate metastasis in various tumour models by different mechanisms including inhibition of tumour cell contacts with soluble and cellular components such as inhibition of heparanase or P- and L-selectin. We recently showed that heparin efficiently binds to VLA-4 integrin in melanoma cells in vitro. Here we describe VLA-4 integrin as a mediator of melanoma metastasis that is inhibited by the low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) Tinzaparin., Materials and Methods: sh-RNA-mediated knock-down of VLA-4 integrin in B16F10 murine melanoma cells (B16F10-VLA-4kd) was performed and cell binding characteristics were investigated in vitro. Experimental metastasis of B16F10-VLA-4kd and B16F10 cells and interference by Tinzaparin were analysed in mice., Results: VLA-4 knock-down of B16F10 cells resulted in loss of VCAM-1 binding, but preserved the capacity to bind platelets through P-selectin. The observed reduced metastasis of B16F10-VLA-4kd cells confirmed the role of VLA-4 in this process. However, loss of melanoma VLA-4 function hardly further affected reduction of metastasis in P-selectin deficient mice. Tinzaparin treatment of mice injected with B16F10 and B16F10-VLA-4kd cells significantly reduced metastasis suggesting its potential to block both P- and L-selectin and VLA-4 in vivo. The use of N-acetylated heparin, which has no VLA-4 binding activity but blocks P- and L-selectin was less efficient than Tinzaparin in mice injected with B16F10 cells and B16F10-VLA-4kd cells., Conclusion: These findings provide evidence that heparin inhibits experimental melanoma metastasis primarily by blocking VLA-4 and P-selectin., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

People with social problems and risks very often also suffer from health problems and risks. This refers to at least 10% of the population. We were interested to learn how many articles in the leading German journal of Public Health "Das Gesundheitswesen" are dealing with this topic of social inequality and health. From 1990 to 1999 just 5.4% of the 1399 published articles deal with this topic. The authors mainly came from social epidemiology; practical research was rare. This also seems to be a consequence of a lack of research in the departments of social work education.

In a qualitative sociological investigation analyses of the process of disease, care and treatment of patients with long-term somatoform disorders were carried out. In connection with this discrepancies between physicians and patients are seen as the central treatment problem. Different views of patients and physicians concerning the way the disorders should be understood and successfully treated lead to crisis in the treatment process and may have serious consequences for the patients. It is shown how the questioned practising family doctors deal with discrepancies in a professional way and how the quality of help increases. Practice-theoretical reflection for the described action and aspects of quality assurance are presented.

The relation between social work and social medicine is the subject of this article. Social work is an independent discipline creating its own knowledge in scientific cooperation with other disciplines. Social Medicine is outlined with its special features as a field and as a medical discipline. The traditional relation between social work and the discipline of Social Medicine operates side by side. Since Social Medicine and social work refer to each other, new perspectives for the development of health-related social work arise. Social Medicine appeared in social work can help in elaborating a sociogenetic model of understanding health and illness as well as the development of sociotherapy in social work. Health-related social work will gain more significance in the treatment of health-related and disease-related questions.

Considering the discussions on the reform in medical education and the Free University of Berlin's plans for a reformed curriculum for medical studies, a new model in teaching and learning for the course "social medicine" was developed and tested. The model deals with students' interests in topics of social medicine and allows inductive access to matters of social medicine by means of exemplary learning. Teacher's task is to be moderator and organizer of learning processes. Experiences show that this procedure leads to improved interest in and more engagement towards the subject "social medicine" within the reach of the course.

The subjective feeling of the status of health by persons residing in the FRG and GDR is compared on the basis of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), which were collected shortly before the merger of both states. The subjective state of health is on the whole approximately similar in both states. Differences in influencing factors are revealed by multivariate analysis.

In the USA voluntary male sterilization is wide-spread since years. In the Federal Republic of Germany the frequency of demanding vasectomy is increasing. All who are involved have to assure whether the request for vasectomy bases upon a mature or a neurotic decision which might be regretted one day. The research is based on the hypothesis that the decision for vasectomy is made in context with the personal structure, the partner relationship, and the family background. Therefore a process of interviews is made which are established on psychoanalytic and couple and family dynamic questions. The sociopsychological data give an impression of the situation in which the decision is made. Different couples with typical behavior patterns are characterized to show the special part of couples interaction in the decision-making process. The sequelae of vasectomy is expected to be largely determined by the development of the partner relationship. This is a subject for a planned follow-up study.

Ninety-two men were explored by depth psychological interviews before vasectomy and 12-15 months later. Eighty-six of them were completely satisfied with the operation. Six men were dissatisfied and would not undergo the operation again. Forty men requesting refertilization were also explored by depth psychological interviews one day before operation. The comparison of these two groups shows that vasectomy is problematic for men who are younger than 30 years, being in training, and whose partners are not willing to undergo sterilization as well. Men without partners and without children should reconsider their decision for vasectomy and particularly those who show the above-mentioned characteristics and/or those who make the decision without being able to use condoms and/or are unable to handle the situation in case of an abortion. The length of partnership is not important for the sequelae of vasectomy.

It is initially outlined that cancer diseases have serious implications for the psychic well-being and the social relationships of those affected, and that disease experience and coping are influenced in an intricate manner by a variety of factors. The independence of social work, and its importance, in the field of cancer aftercare become evident in its focussing activities on the social dimension of the disease, i.e., the individual life situation of the client, and in devising varied forms of social support. The importance of social relationships and social integration for success, or failure, of the process of adjusting to the disease-related changes in the life situation are stressed. Successful adjustment is considered an essential prerequisite for securing, or restoring, a maximum level of quality of life, thus also for enhancing the recovery process.