The semileptonic decays η(′)→π0ℓ+ℓ−\eta^{(\prime)} \to \pi^0 \ell^+ \ell^- and η′→ηℓ+ℓ−\eta' \to \eta \ell^+ \ell^- in the standard model

We perform a theoretical analysis of the semileptonic decays $\eta^{(\prime)} \to \pi^0 \ell^+ \ell^-$ and $\eta' \to \eta \ell^+ \ell^-$, where $\ell = e, \mu$, via a charge-conjugation-conserving two-photon mechanism. The underlying form factors are modeled using vector-meson dominance, phenomenological input, and $\mathrm{U}(3)$ flavor symmetry. We consider both a monopole and a dipole model, the latter tailored such that the expected high-energy behavior is ensured. Furthermore, we benchmark the effect of $S$-wave rescattering contributions to the decays. We infer significant effects of the form factors neglected in the literature so far, still finding branching ratios of the various decays well below the current experimental upper limits.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, 13 tables; C++ interface for Collier and Passarino-Veltman decompositions as ancillary file

A Matter of Perspective: An Experimental Study on Potentials of Constructive Journalism for Communicating a Crisis

Restorative narratives describe a new form of journalism that attempts to overcome the detrimental effects of the more prevalent negative and destructive tone of news coverage. This study investigates the potentials and risks of restorative narratives in the coverage of crises with a 2 (restorative/negative) × 2 (COVID-19/climate crisis) experimental online study (n = 829) for emotional, cognitive, evaluative, and behavioral outcomes. For both crises, results demonstrate that restorative narratives evoked more positive emotional reactions to the news, were more likely to be endorsed, and improved quality ratings of the news article compared with negative narratives. We found no effects for elaboration and information-seeking

Disorder control in crystalline GeSb2Te4 and its impact on characteristic length scales

Crystalline GeSb2Te4 (GST) is remarkable material, as it allows to continuously tune the electrical resistance by orders of magnitude without involving a phase transition or stoichiometric changes, just by altering the short-range order. While well-ordered specimen are metallic, increasing amounts of disorder can eventually lead to an insulating state with vanishing conductivity in the 0K limit, but a similar number of charge carriers. These observations make disordered GST one of the most promising candidates for the realization of a true Anderson insulator. While so far the low-temperature properties have mostly been studied in films of small grain size, here a sputter-deposition process is employed that enables preparation of a large variety of these GST states including metallic and truly insulating ones. By growing films of GST on mica substrates, biaxially textured samples with huge grain sizes are obtained. A series of these samples is employed for transport measurements, as their electron mean free path can be altered by a factor of 20. Yet, the mean free path always remains more than an order of magnitude smaller than the lateral grain size. This proves unequivocally that grain boundaries play a negligible role for electron scattering, while intragrain scattering, presumably by disordered vacancies, dominates. Most importantly, these findings underline that the Anderson insulating state as well as the system's evolution towards metallic conductivity are indeed intrinsic properties of the material

Die Darstellung der katholischen und evangelischen Kirche in der Tagesschau

Der persönliche Bezug zur Institution Kirche hat in den vergangenen Jahren in der deutschen Bevölkerung und auch bei Journalisten kontinuierlich abgenommen. Gleichzeit bleiben die gesellschaftliche Bedeutung der katholischen und evangelischen Kirche sowie ihr gesetzlich geregeltes Verhältnis zum Rundfunk bestehen. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht mithilfe einer quantitativen Inhaltsanalyse von 514 Tagesschau-Beiträgen zu drei Messzeitpunkten (1998/99, 2008/09 und 2018/19) die Berichterstattung über die beiden großen christlichen Kirchen. Im Zentrum stehen dabei die Fragen, in welchen Kontexten bzw. bei welchen Ereignissen über Kirche im Zeitverlauf berichtet und wie positiv oder negativ sie in diesem Zusammenhang dargestellt wird. Es zeigt sich, dass sich die Relevanz der beiden Kirchen in der Tagesschau in den letzten 20 Jahren nicht verändert hat, dass allerdings die katholische Kirche gegenüber der evangelischen Kirche überrepräsentiert ist und signifikant negativer dargestellt wird. Über Ereignisse wird häufiger berichtet als über Stellungnahmen, und die Tendenz der Kirchen-Beiträge ist im Laufe der Jahre signifikant negativer geworden.Although the church is still accepted as an institution within the framework of diaconia and caritas in Germany and is largely recognized as a fixed social factor, the personal relationship to the church as an institution has steadily decreased in recent years among the German population in general and also among journalists in particular. There are tendencies towards secularisation in Germany. Hence, it can be assumed that this increasing secularisation in society and journalism has an impact on the setting of content and topics and the evaluation of the Catholic and Protestant churches. Furthermore, it can be assumed that media coverage is the primary (perhaps even only) source of information about the churches for a considerable part of the population. The fewer Germans are active church members, the more likely it becomes that the only information about church comes from the media. Consequently, the image of the church in the media can have a decisive impact on the ideas of the German population about the church. At the same time, the relationship between the Catholic and Protestant Church on one hand and broadcasting (radio and television) on the other is regulated by law, so that, for example, the churches are represented in the supervisory authorities of public broadcasting corporations. With this knowledge, the question arises whether and to what extent the coverage of the Catholic and Protestant churches has changed in recent years. Due to complex realities, journalists are bound to select information and place emphasis on particular aspects, which means that the perspective on certain topics can be largely determined by journalistic information. Topics are framed this way and portrayed through the lenses of the journalist’s image of church. In addition to the journalistic frames, many other factors such as culture, political orientation and the journalistic self-image determine the creation of these media frames directly and in turn indirectly via the journalist’s frames. However, how the churches are framed in the media coverage has so far hardly been researched. Based on former research, it can only be stated that compared to the Protestant church, the Catholic church is overrepresented in the German media. Furthermore, religion only appears worth reporting if it is polarizing or linked to other topics, e.g. politics. Moreover, the church is being reported on in a personalised manner, and the evaluations of the church as an institution are ambivalent. In order to narrow this research gap and to examine the reporting on the Catholic and Protestant church over time, a quantitative content analysis of 514 Tagesschau segments was carried out at three points of time (1998/99, 2008/09 and 2018/19). The coverage of the Tagesschau was examined because it is still the news programme with the widest reach in Germany and simultaneously offers an orientation function to other journalists. This approach had been chosen to answer the question, in which contexts or at which events church was reported on over time and how positively or negatively it was presented in the respective contexts. It turns out that firstly the relevance of the Catholic and Protestant churches in the coverage of the Tagesschau has neither increased nor decreased over the years. This is supported by the fact that neither the number, nor the length or the position of the segments about church has changed significantly. Secondly, it can be stated that the Catholic church is overrepresented in the coverage in comparison to the Protestant church, which is in line with previous research results, but runs contrary to the current social distribution in Germany. Thirdly, it is noticeable that the churches are often only reported on in connection with church-specific topics and less with church-independent topics, which has not changed over the years. Besides it is worth mentioning that the number of articles reporting on church events has increased significantly over the years, while church statements have become increasingly rare. Thematically, the image of the churches in the Tagesschau is specifically framed in such a way that most of the segments are about church events, political discussions, and church politics. The image of the large institutions is thus being strengthened and at the same time reduced to internal issues and conflicts. This topic setting has not changed significantly in the last 20 years. However, journalists seem to differentiate between the two denominations, since the Protestant church is significantly more often associated with non-church matters than the Catholic church. Fourth, contrary to other research findings on tabloidisation, no personalisation tendencies in church reporting can be found in the last 20 years. Finally, reporting on the church can be classified as negative and critical. On one hand, this has increased significantly over the years, on the other hand, the reporting on the Catholic church has a significantly more negative tendency than the Protestant church. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that at every point of time the journalists make use of “opportune witnesses”, so that negative statements about the church are more frequently quoted than the positive ones. All in all it can be said that the coverage of the Tagesschau about the churches is becoming more and more critical and distanced

Optimizing Mouse Surgery with Online Rectal Temperature Monitoring and Preoperative Heat Supply. Effects on Post-Ischemic Acute Kidney Injury

Body temperature affects outcomes of tissue injury. We hypothesized that online body core temperature recording and selective interventions help to standardize peri-interventional temperature control and the reliability of outcomes in experimental renal ischemia reperfusion injury (IRI). We recorded core temperature in up to seven mice in parallel using a Thermes USB recorder and ret-3-iso rectal probes with three different protocols. Setup A: Heating pad during ischemia time;Setup B: Heating pad from incision to wound closure;Setup C: A ventilated heating chamber before surgery and during ischemia time with surgeries performed on a heating pad. Temperature profile recording displayed significant declines upon installing anesthesia. The profile of the baseline experimental setup A revealed that <1% of the temperature readings were within the target range of 36.5 to 38.5 degrees C. Setup B and C increased the target range readings to 34.6 +/- 28.0% and 99.3 +/- 1.5%, respectively. Setup C significantly increased S3 tubular necrosis, neutrophil influx, and mRNA expression of kidney injury markers. In addition, using setup C different ischemia times generated a linear correlation with acute tubular necrosis parameters at a low variability, which further correlated with the degree of kidney atrophy 5 weeks after surgery. Changing temperature control setup A to C was equivalent to 10 minutes more ischemia time. We conclude that body temperature drops quickly in mice upon initiating anesthesia. Immediate heat supply, e.g. in a ventilated heating chamber, and online core temperature monitoring can help to standardize and optimize experimental outcomes

Particle production in a hybrid approach for a beam energy scan of Au+Au/Pb+Pb collisions between sNN\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} = 4.3 GeV and sNN\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} = 200.0 GeV

Heavy-ion collisions at varying collision energies provide access to different regions of the QCD phase diagram. In particular collisions at intermediate energies are promising candidates to experimentally identify the postulated first order phase transition and critical end point. While heavy-ion collisions at low and high collision energies are theoretically well described by transport approaches and hydrodynamics+transport hybrid approaches, respectively, intermediate energy collisions remain a challenge. In this work, a modular hybrid approach, the SMASH-vHLLE-hybrid coupling 3+1D viscous hydrodynamics (vHLLE) to hadronic transport (SMASH), is introduced. It is validated and subsequently applied in Au+Au/Pb+Pb collisions between $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}$ = 4.3 GeV and $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}$ = 200.0 GeV to study the rapidity and transverse mass distributions of identified particles as well as excitation functions for $\mathrm{dN}/\mathrm{d}y|_{y = 0}$ and $\langle p_\mathrm{T} \rangle$. A good agreement with experimental measurements is obtained, including the baryon stopping dynamics. The transition from a Gaussian rapidity spectrum of protons at lower energies to the double-hump structure at high energies is reproduced. The centrality and energy dependence of charged particle $v_2$ is also described reasonably well. This work serves as a basis for further studies, e.g. systematic investigations of different equations of state or transport coefficients

Individual tree point clouds and tree measurements from multi-platform laser scanning in German forests

Laser scanning from different acquisition platforms enables the collection of 3D point clouds from different perspectives and with varying resolutions. These point clouds allow us to retrieve detailed information on the individual tree and forest structure. We conducted airborne laser scanning (ALS), uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV)-borne laser scanning (ULS) and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) in two German mixed forests with species typical of central Europe. We provide the spatially overlapping, georeferenced point clouds for 12 forest plots. As a result of individual tree extraction, we furthermore present a comprehensive database of tree point clouds and corresponding tree metrics. Tree metrics were derived from the point clouds and, for half of the plots, also measured in the field. Our dataset may be used for the creation of 3D tree models for radiative transfer modeling or lidar simulation studies or to fit allometric equations between point cloud metrics and forest inventory variables. It can further serve as a benchmark dataset for different algorithms and machine learning tasks, in particular automated individual tree segmentation, tree species classification or forest inventory metric prediction. The dataset and supplementary metadata are available for download, hosted by the PANGAEA data publisher at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.942856 (Weiser et al., 2022a)

In Vitro Analysis of Human Cartilage Infiltrated by Hydrogels and Hydrogel-Encapsulated Chondrocytes

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative joint disease causing loss of articular cartilage and structural damage in all joint tissues. Given the limited regenerative capacity of articular cartilage, methods to support the native structural properties of articular cartilage are highly anticipated. The aim of this study was to infiltrate zwitterionic monomer solutions into human OA-cartilage explants to replace lost proteoglycans. The study included polymerization and deposition of methacryloyloxyethyl-phosphorylcholine- and a novel sulfobetaine-methacrylate-based monomer solution within ex vivo human OA-cartilage explants and the encapsulation of isolated chondrocytes within hydrogels and the corresponding effects on chondrocyte viability. The results demonstrated that zwitterionic cartilage–hydrogel networks are formed by infiltration. In general, cytotoxic effects of the monomer solutions were observed, as was a time-dependent infiltration behavior into the tissue accompanied by increasing cell death and penetration depth. The successful deposition of zwitterionic hydrogels within OA cartilage identifies the infiltration method as a potential future therapeutic option for the repair/replacement of OA-cartilage extracellular suprastructure. Due to the toxic effects of the monomer solutions, the focus should be on sealing the OA-cartilage surface, instead of complete infiltration. An alternative treatment option for focal cartilage defects could be the usage of monomer solutions, especially the novel generated sulfobetaine-methacrylate-based monomer solution, as bionic for cell-based 3D bioprintable hydrogels