Elevated aluminium concentration in acidified headwater streams lowers aquatic hyphomycete diversity and impairs leaf-litter breakdown.

Aquatic hyphomycetes play an essential role in the decomposition of allochthonous organic matter which is a fundamental process driving the functioning of forested headwater streams. We studied the effect of anthropogenic acidification on aquatic hyphomycetes associated with decaying leaves of Fagus sylvatica in six forested headwater streams (pH range, 4.3-7.1). Non-metric multidimensional scaling revealed marked differences in aquatic hyphomycete assemblages between acidified and reference streams. We found strong relationships between aquatic hyphomycete richness and mean Al concentration (r = -0.998, p < 0.0001) and mean pH (r = 0.962, p < 0.002), meaning that fungal diversity was severely depleted in acidified streams. By contrast, mean fungal biomass was not related to acidity. Leaf breakdown rate was drastically reduced under acidic conditions raising the issue of whether the functioning of headwater ecosystems could be impaired by a loss of aquatic hyphomycete species

Nazism, Religion, and Human Experimentation

Multiple factors have been identified as contributing to the willingness of physicians and scientists to participate in the development and conduct of experiments carried out on Nazi concentration camp prisoners, including the economic challenges then facing physicians, the potential for increased status and power in the Nazi government, and their own hostility toward Jews and others deemed “not worth living.” They conducted these experiments against a backdrop of their societies’ longstanding anti-Semitic sentiments, the promulgation of anti-Jewish rhetoric by Christian authorities, and the incorporation into law of increasingly severe and restrictive anti-Jewish measures and, ultimately, embraced efforts to eradicate all Jews and evidence of Jewishness. This chapter argues that religion was relevant not only to the question of who was targeted by Nazi medical policy—Jews, conceived of by the Nazis as a race rather than a religion—but also to the question of who was doing the targeting—physicians who appear to have identified religiously primarily as Christians and who interpreted Nazi dogma as congruent with their religious beliefs and teachings.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44150-0_