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PURPOSE: Today, male and female adult and pediatric cancer patients, individuals transitioning between gender identities, and other individuals facing health extending but fertility limiting treatments can look forward to a fertile future. This is, in part, due to the work of members associated with the Oncofertility Consortium. METHODS: The Oncofertility Consortium is an international, interdisciplinary initiative originally designed to explore the urgent unmet need associated with the reproductive future of cancer survivors. As the strategies for fertility management were invented, developed or applied, the individuals for who the program offered hope, similarly expanded. As a community of practice, Consortium participants share information in an open and rapid manner to addresses the complex health care and quality-of-life issues of cancer, transgender and other patients. To ensure that the organization remains contemporary to the needs of the community, the field designed a fully inclusive mechanism for strategic planning and here present the findings of this process. RESULTS: This interprofessional network of medical specialists, scientists, and scholars in the law, medical ethics, religious studies and other disciplines associated with human interventions, explore the relationships between health, disease, survivorship, treatment, gender and reproductive longevity. CONCLUSION: The goals are to continually integrate the best science in the service of the needs of patients and build a community of care that is ready for the challenges of the field in the future.

Ecological niches of organisms vary across geographical space, but niche shift patterns between regions and the underlying mechanisms remain largely unexplored. We studied shifts in the pH niche of 42 temperate forest plant species across a latitudinal gradient from northern France to boreo-nemoral Sweden. We asked 1) whether species restrict their niches with increasing latitude as they reach their northern range margin (environmental constraints); 2) whether species expand their niches with increasing latitude as regional plant species richness decreases (competitive release); and 3) whether species shift their niche position toward more acidic sites with increasing latitude as the relative proportion of acidic soils increases (local adaptation). Based on 1458 vegetation plots and corresponding soil pH values, we modelled species response curves using Huisman-Olff-Fresco models. Four niche measures (width, position, left and right border) were compared among regions by randomization tests. We found that with increasing latitude, neutrophilic species tended to retreat from acidic sites, indicating that these species retreat to more favorable sites when approaching their range margin. Alternatively, these species might benefit from enhanced nitrogen deposition on formerly nutrient-poor, acidic sites in southern regions or lag behind in post-glacial recolonization of potential habitats in northern regions. Most acidophilic species extended their niche toward more base-rich sites with increasing latitude, indicating competitive release from neutrophilic species. Alternatively, acidophilic species might benefit from optimal climatic conditions in the north where some have their core distribution area. Shifts in the niche position suggested that local adaptation is of minor importance. We conclude that shifts in the pH niche of temperate forest plants are the rule, but the directions of the niche shifts and possible explanations vary. Our study demonstrates that differe

Item does not contain fulltext, Authoritarianism is a form of social behavior characterized by strict obedience to the authority of a state or organization and adherence to enforcing and maintaining control through the use of oppressive measures. It refers to a complex of nine subsyndromes (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford, 1950), of which conventionalism (strict adherence to conventional values), aggression and submission are the most important (Meloen, 1991). The subsyndromes explain why authoritarian people tend to look down on (contraidentify) and discriminate social or ethnic groups that are 'different'. Authoritarianism is part of a broader cluster of cultural conservative attitudes, especially vivid within the lower social classes (Meloen and Middendorp, 1985; De Witte, 1990). Scheepers, Felling, and Peters (1992) argue that a sociological explanation for an authoritarian attitude lies within the need for compensation for political powerlessness, caused by unfavorable social circumstances.

Approximately 100 years after the first inspection of the concept of ethnocentrism by William Graham Sumner (1906), it is still en vogue in the scientific research. For example, if one googles “ethnocentrism”, one gets about 426,000 hits, thousands of papers, and many definitions in different fields of sciences ranging from medicine to philosophy. However, the core idea of ethnocentrism is almost the same in all fields.

One of the prerequisites for a functioning democracy is that its citizens support by and large its democratic system. However, such support cannot be taken for granted and should be monitored. Furthermore, different people may have different perceptions, expectations, and understanding of the concept of democracy. This may be especially true for citizens socialized in different political systems like those in Eastern and Western Europe before the fall of the iron curtain, where the concept of democracy and the rights of citizens in a democracy were communicated in quite different ways.