Osnabrück University

Worldwide, billions of day-old male chicks are culled each year in the egg industry due to the low market value of layer-type males. As a result of public pressure on this ethical issue, some countries banned the practice, leading to changes in animal welfare legislation. In addition to the use of dual-purpose chicken for egg and meat production, technologies for in-ovo sex determination, aiming to cull male embryos during early development and prior to the onset of pain perception, are feasible alternatives. However, the temporal onset of pain perception in chick embryos is still unknown, and its determination is challenging. Here we embed a review of the existing literature of in-ovo pain research under the country-specific umbrella of societal discussions and culling alternatives. Recently, a study on nociception measured first signs of responses by the embryo at day 13 of incubation. Still, neither the depiction of nociceptive pathways nor an EEG, which includes signals of general muscle contraction, provide definitive proof of the perception of pain. We urge that more knowledge about the development of pain perception in chick embryos is key to the ethical framework that should underpin policy decisions.

This study examined everyday exposure to fitspiration, thinspiration, body positivity, and body neutrality content on image-based social media and its associations with body image, mood, self-esteem, and disordered eating behavior using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in women with and without eating disorders. Women with self-reported anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa (n = 62) and women without eating disorders (n = 81) reported their social media use, mood, body image, self-esteem, appearance comparisons, and disordered eating behavior via a smartphone app for 7 days. Viewing fitspiration and thinspiration content was significantly associated with lower happiness, higher body dissatisfaction, and lower body appreciation, but not with daily-reported restrained eating. Only thinspiration content was significantly associated with higher sadness and lower self-esteem. Upward appearance comparisons mediated the associations of exposure to fitspiration and thinspiration content with all outcomes. Except for higher body appreciation after viewing body neutrality content, there were no main effects of body positivity and body neutrality. Compared to women without eating disorders, those with self-reported anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa showed a greater reduction in self-esteem after viewing thinspiration. The results highlight the possible detrimental effects of exposure to fitspiration and thinspiration content on mood, body image, and self-esteem in women with and without self-reported anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa alike, while only body neutrality content was related to higher body appreciation. Women with and without eating disorders should be educated about the possible negative influences of content purporting to improve one's appearance.

Die Berliner Justizsenatorin Badenberg hat öffentlich verkündet, dass sie das Berliner Partizipationsgesetz, mit dem mehr Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund in den Landesdienst aufgenommen werden sollen, für teilweise verfassungswidrig hält und es deshalb nur noch eingeschränkt anwenden will. Ihr verfassungsrechtlicher Einwand kann jedoch schon auf Anhieb wenig überzeugen. Man muss sich also eher fragen, ob hier nicht aus politischen Gründen ein Widerspruch herbeikonstruiert worden ist. Das Gesetz deswegen nicht anzuwenden, erweist sich daher als eine Form exekutiven Gesetzesungehorsams.

Tree species differ in how they acquire nutrients through arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) symbioses, yet how these contrasting mycorrhizal strategies regulate soil microbial nutrient mobilization and its coupling to tree nutrient status remains poorly resolved. Here, using a 10-year temperate tree diversity experiment, we quantified soil microbial community structure, phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA)-derived carbon (C) sources tracing, ecoenzymatic stoichiometry, and foliar nutrient pools to test how tree diversity and mycorrhizal type control the linkage between soil microbial nutrient acquisition and foliar nutrient pools. We found that the tree mycorrhizal type exerted a dominant control on microbial community structure. AMF-associated tree mixtures (plots dominated by AMF tree species) were characterized by saprotrophic Ascomycota, which exhibited a higher contribution of root-derived C to fungal biomass, whereas EMF-associated mixtures were dominated by symbiotrophic Basidiomycota that relied more strongly on detritus-derived C. Ecoenzymatic strategies diverged consistently with these contrasting C acquisition pathways. AMF-associated soils exhibited higher C-acquiring enzyme activity and a greater vector length (an index of microbial C acquisition investment), indicating stronger microbial investment in C acquisition from soil organic matter. In contrast, EMF-associated soils exhibited lower vector angles (indicating relative microbial investment in nitrogen versus phosphorus acquisition) and significantly higher nitrogen (N)-acquiring enzyme activity, reflecting enhanced microbial N acquisition. Across all tree mixtures, fungal community composition was tightly linked to ecoenzymatic stoichiometry, and both were significantly associated with foliar N pools. Partial least squares path modelling revealed that mycorrhizal type influenced foliar N pools primarily through indirect pathways contributed by fungal community structure and microbial N-acquisition strategy. Together, these results demonstrate that mycorrhizal type governs how soil microbes channel C from the tree into N mobilization pathways, thereby regulating the strength of belowground–aboveground N coupling. Our findings reveal a mechanism by which mycorrhizal associations, rather than tree diversity alone, shape soil microbe–tree interactions in temperate forest ecosystems.

Vision–language models (VLMs) are increasingly used for the semantic interpretation of visual data, enabling flexible, open-vocabulary analysis of images based on natural language descriptions. These capabilities offer new opportunities for large-scale semantic mapping, particularly in domains where comprehensive labeled training data are scarce or difficult to obtain, such as agricultural and horticultural environments.Recent research has explored the transfer of semantic information from 2D imagery into three-dimensional representations, a process often called semantic lifting. This approach is attractive for outdoor scene understanding, as training native 3D vision–language models that generalize across landscapes and management regimes remains challenging and tools for 3D data are therefore not developed as far as in the 2D domain. However, most existing studies on semantic lifting focus on indoor environments or urban outdoor scenes, while agricultural landscapes—with their distinct structural characteristics, vegetation dynamics, and management patterns—remain underexplored.In this contribution, we investigate the applicability of open-vocabulary, VLM-based semantic lifting for large-scale 3D semantic mapping in agricultural settings. Building on insights from urban-scale benchmarks, we analyze how vision–language-driven semantic segmentation transfers to outdoor agricultural and horticultural scenes reconstructed from multi-view UAV imagery. Our results highlight both the potential of these models to generate spatially consistent semantic representations and their limitations, which are strongly dependent on land cover type and semantic classes.We discuss how such preliminary semantic 3D representations can support large-scale agroecosystem mapping and serve as an initial layer for downstream applications, including spatial analysis and the deployment of agricultural robotic systems. The findings provide guidance on the opportunities and current constraints of foundation-model-based semantic mapping for sustainable agricultural monitoring.

Background: Occupational contact allergy is common in the cleaning industry.Objective: To identify common occupational sensitizers and analyze time trends in type IV sensitization in female cleaners.Methods: Data of 860 female cleaners with occupational dermatitis (OD) patch tested in 58 centers within the Information Network of Departments of Dermatology from 2010 to 2022 were analyzed. The comparison group consisted of 966 female cleaners without OD. Statistical analyses included 95% confidence intervals (CIs) and the exact Cochran-Armitage trend test.Results: Among 860 female cleaners with OD, 729 (84.8%) had hand dermatitis. Most frequent final diagnoses were irritant contact dermatitis (32.8%) and allergic contact dermatitis (25.3%). Compared to female cleaners without OD, higher sensitization rates were found for rubber additives (thiuram mix [8.6%, 95% CI: 6.5-10.7], zinc diethyldithiocarbamate [2.0%, 95% CI: 0.9-3.1], mercapto mix [1.3%, 95% CI: 0.4-2.1]), formaldehyde (2.3%, 95% CI: 1.0-3.6), and hydroxyisohexyl 3-cyclohexene carboxaldehyde (HICC) (3.0%, 95% CI: 1.5-4.6). Glutaraldehyde sensitization showed a decreasing time trend over the study period and should be further monitored.Conclusions: Rubber additives, preservatives/disinfectants (aldehydes), and HICC are occupationally relevant sensitizers in female cleaners, underscoring the need for targeted prevention strategies and continuous monitoring to protect their health.

Wnt ligands stimulate β-catenin-dependent (canonical) or β-catenin-independent (noncanonical) signaling, depending on which co-receptors are recruited to the Wnt receptor FZD. Both pathways are initiated by receptor oligomerization into signalosomes and involve a largely overlapping set of downstream effectors. To resolve the assembly of Wnt signalosomes with high spatiotemporal resolution for extended times, we developed single-molecule tracking and localization microscopy based on labeling with reversibly binding nanobodies (rbTALM). We engineered nanobody-tag pairs with finely tuned binding affinities to ensure single-molecule tracking with high fidelity while also permitting continuous exchange of photobleached labels. Multicolor rbTALM imaging enabled simultaneous tracking and super-resolution imaging of three different tagged Wnt co-receptors in the same cell for more than 1 hour at video rate. Time-lapse correlation analyses uncovered cooperative association of canonical (LRP6) and noncanonical (ROR2) Wnt co-receptors with FZD8 into a common, hybrid Wnt signalosome. These findings demonstrate the potential for rbTALM imaging for exploring nanoscale dynamics across millisecond to hour timescales and for deciphering the molecular dynamics that underlie signaling complex formation.

Even among people who agree on the existence and urgency of the climate crisis, different understandings of its causes and consequences prevail. Climate change can be understood primarily as a question of injustice, stressing its unequal effects on privileged and vulnerable individuals and groups, but it can also be conceptualized as a common fate, stressing the vulnerability of humanity as a whole. Across four studies (total N = 1,402), with activists and general population samples from Germany, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom, we investigated how these different understandings might affect participation in political activism against climate change. In line with our predictions, we consistently found that climate injustice appraisals (at the individual, group, and systemic level) positively predicted collective action intentions whereas common fate perceptions showed no or negative effects. We discuss the implications of our findings for researchers and climate movements, particularly the importance of centering climate (in)justice in mobilizing climate action and the potentially demobilizing effects of common fate narratives. • Climate change can be framed in different ways • One way is to center injustices in responsibility and vulnerability between individuals and groups • Another is to view it as a common fate shared by humanity as a whole • Injustice appraisals around climate change are linked to higher collective action intentions • Common fate perceptions of climate change are linked to lower collective action intentions