Chiral and Gluon Condensates at Finite Temperature

We investigate the thermal behaviour of gluon and chiral condensates within an effective Lagrangian of pseudoscalar mesons coupled to a scalar glueball. This Lagrangian mimics the scale and chiral symmetries of QCD. (Submitted to Z. Phys. C)Comment: 20 pages + 7 figures (uuencoded compressed postscript files), University of Regensburg preprint TPR-94-1

Kohlenstoffbilanzen von renaturierten Hangmooren im Hunsrück, Rheinland-Pfalz

In Moorböden ist ein Großteil des terrestrischen Kohlenstoffs gespeichert. Drainage für land- oder forstwirtschaftliche Nutzung von Mooren führt zu einer Freisetzung von Kohlenstoff aus dem Boden in die Atmosphäre. Renaturierung von genutzten Mooren ist ein weitverbreitetes Steuerungsinstrument um die Treibhausgasemissionen von Moorböden zu reduzieren. Dieses Projekt zielt darauf ab, die Kohlenstoffbilanzen von renaturierten Hangmooren zu quantifizieren. Die sogenannten Hangbrücher im Nationalpark Hunsrück-Hochwald sind charakteristisch für die Region. Sie wurden seit dem 19. Jahrhundert mit Gräben für die forstwirtschaftliche Nutzung (Fichte) entwässert. Seit einigen Jahren werden sie im Rahmen von verschiedenen Projekten durch Grabenverschlüsse wiedervernässt. Außerdem wurde die Entnahme von standortsfremder Bestockung mittels Seilkran durchgeführt. Sechs Moore mit unterschiedlichen Degradierungsstadien wurden ausgewählt und verschiedene bodenchemische, -physikalische und -hydrologische Parameter aufgenommen. Die Ausdehnung der Moorflächen und die Kohlenstoffvorräte (Boden und Holz) werden erfasst und in ein Moorkataster überführt. Geoelektrische Sondierungen und Kartierungen werden zur Charakterisierung des oberflächennahen Untergrundes der Moorwälder und Hangmoore sowie zur Erfassung der hydrologischen Situation der Moorstandorte durchgeführt. Des Weiteren werden luftgestützte Laserscanaufnahmen für hochaufgelöste Geländemodelle und eine Abschätzung des Holzvorrates der Moore verwendet. Das Gesamtziel einer flächendeckenden Kohlenstoffbilanzierung wird erreicht, indem wir auf der Grundlage des Moorkatasters ein Upscaling der Kohlenstoffvorräte bei unterschiedlichen Renaturierungsszenarien durchführen. Das Moorkataster bietet außerdem die Möglichkeit die erhobenen Daten für ein Langzeitmonitoring der Flächen zu nutzen und dient dabei als Grundlage für weitere Untersuchungen

The Vital Role of Social Workers in Community Partnerships: The Alliance for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Youth

The account of The Alliance for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (GLBTQ) Youth formation offers a model for developing com- munity-based partnerships. Based in a major urban area, this university-community collaboration was spearheaded by social workers who were responsible for its original conceptualization, for generating community support, and for eventual staffing, administration, direct service provision, and program evaluation design. This article presents the strategic development and evolution of this community- based service partnership, highlighting the roles of schools of social work, academics, and social work students in concert with community funders, practitioners and youth, in responding to the needs of a vulnerable population

Early anthropogenic transformation of the Danube-Black Sea system

© The Author(s), 2012. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 2 (2012): 582, doi:10.1038/srep00582.Over the last century humans have altered the export of fluvial materials leading to significant changes in morphology, chemistry, and biology of the coastal ocean. Here we present sedimentary, paleoenvironmental and paleogenetic evidence to show that the Black Sea, a nearly enclosed marine basin, was affected by land use long before the changes of the Industrial Era. Although watershed hydroclimate was spatially and temporally variable over the last ~3000 years, surface salinity dropped systematically in the Black Sea. Sediment loads delivered by Danube River, the main tributary of the Black Sea, significantly increased as land use intensified in the last two millennia, which led to a rapid expansion of its delta. Lastly, proliferation of diatoms and dinoflagellates over the last five to six centuries, when intensive deforestation occurred in Eastern Europe, points to an anthropogenic pulse of river-borne nutrients that radically transformed the food web structure in the Black Sea.This study was supported by grants OISE 0637108, EAR 0952146, OCE 0602423 and OCE 0825020 from the National Science Foundation and grants from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Land use change impacts on floods at the catchment scale: Challenges and opportunities for future research

Research gaps in understanding flood changes at the catchment scale caused by changes in forest management, agricultural practices, artificial drainage and terracing are identified. Potential strategies in addressing these gaps are proposed, such as complex systems approaches to link processes across time scales, long-term experiments on physical-chemical-biological process interactions, and a focus on connectivity and patterns across spatial scales. It is suggested that these strategies will stimulate new research that coherently addresses the issues across hydrology, soil and agricultural sciences, forest engineering, forest ecology and geomorphology

Molecular signatures for CCN1, p21 and p27 in progressive mantle cell lymphoma

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a comparatively rare non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma characterised by overexpression of cyclin D1.Many patients present with or progress to advanced stage disease within 3 years. MCL is considered an incurable disease withmedian survival between 3 and 4 years. We have investigated the role(s) of CCN1 (CYR61) and cell cycle regulators inprogressive MCL. We have used the human MCL cell lines REC1 G519 > JVM2 cells by RQ-PCR, depicting a decrease in CCN1expression with disease progression. Investigation of CCN1 isoform expression by western blotting showed that whilst expres-sion of full-length CCN1 was barely altered in the cell lines, expression of truncated forms (18–20 and 28–30 kDa) decreasedwith disease progression. We have then demonstrated that cyclin D1 and cyclin dependent kinase inhibitors (p21CIP1and p27KIP1)are also involved in disease progression. Cyclin D1 was highly expressed in REC1 cells (OD: 1.0), reduced to one fifth in G519cells (OD: 0.2) and not detected by western blotting in JVM2 cells. p27KIP1followed a similar profile of expression as cyclin D1.Conversely, p21CIP1was absent in the REC1 cells and showed increasing expression in G519 and JVM2 cells. Subcellularlocalization detected p21CIP1/p27KIP1primarily within the cytoplasm and absent from the nucleus, consistent with altered roles in treatment resistance. Dysregulation of the CCN1 truncated forms are associated with MCL progression. In conjunction withreduced expression of cyclin D1 and increased expression of p21, this molecular signature may depict aggressive disease andtreatment resistance