f Sulfonamide antibiotics have a wide application range in human and veterinary medicine. Because they tend to persist in the environment, they pose potential problems with regard to the propagation of antibiotic resistance. Here, we identified metabolites formed during the degradation of sulfamethoxazole and other sulfonamides in Microbacterium sp. strain BR1. Our experiments showed that the degradation proceeded along an unusual pathway initiated by ipso-hydroxylation with subsequent fragmentation of the parent compound. The NADH-dependent hydroxylation of the carbon atom attached to the sulfonyl group resulted in the release of sulfite, 3-amino-5-methylisoxazole, and benzoquinone-imine. The latter was concomitantly transformed to 4-aminophenol. Sulfadiazine, sulfamethizole, sulfamethazine, sulfadimethoxine, 4-amino-N-phenylbenzenesulfonamide, and N-(4-aminophenyl)sulfonylcarbamic acid methyl ester (asulam) were transformed accordingly. Therefore, ipso-hydroxylation with subsequent fragmentation must be considered the underlying mechanism; this could also occur in the same or in a similar way in other studies, where biotransformation of sulfonamides bearing an amino group in the para-position to the sulfonyl substituent was observed to yield products corresponding to the stable metabolites observed by us. Sulfonamides are widely used as antibiotics, antidiabetics, diuretics, antivirals, and anticancer agents (1-4), and thus, large amounts of these compounds enter the environment every year (5, 6). Contamination with sulfonamides poses environmental concern due to the potential development and dissemination of antibiotic resistances (7). Despite their ubiquity, their microbial metabolism and ultimate fate in the environment thereof are poorly understood.Several studies showed that sulfamethoxazole (SMX) (Fig. 1a), an important representative of sulfonamide compounds, undergoes partial degradation in wastewater treatment plants under aerobic and anaerobic conditions (8-11). We recently demonstrated that Microbacterium sp. strain BR1, a Gram-positive bacterium isolated from a membrane bioreactor treating effluent contaminated by several pharmaceuticals, was capable of mineralizing the 14 C-labeled aniline moiety of SMX when the latter was supplied as the sole carbon source (12). This was the first unambiguous indication that sulfonamides are subject to growth-linked metabolism in microorganisms.To our knowledge, Hartig (13) was the first to identify the aminated heteroaromatic side moieties of the sulfonamides SMX and sulfadimethoxine as stable metabolites after biodegradation with activated sludge. This result was recently confirmed by two groups that were able to isolate Microbacterium strains with the ability to degrade the sulfonamides sulfamethazine (SMZ) (14) and sulfadiazine (SDZ) (15). Additionally, both groups identified the aminated heteroaromatic side moieties of the sulfonamide as a stable metabolite after the degradation of the parent compound. Although these stable metabolites were identified, the i...

This article explores the evolution of debate quality in the Swiss parliament. Focusing on immigration debates, we employ a psychological construct—cognitive complexity (CC)—which captures both epistemic and accommodative dimensions of political argumentation. We find a decrease in CC in parliamentary immigration debates over time, but this decrease was driven by the rise of the SVP (Swiss People's Party). However, there was almost no “spillover” of this new communication style to other parties. Moreover, we also find a constant difference between the Ständerat and the Nationalrat, with the former scoring higher on CC and thus asserting its role as a “chambre de réflexion” in immigration debates. Our diachronic focus on the quality of political debate takes a novel perspective on the dynamics of consensus democracy as well as on elite political culture. While our results indicate that the rise of the SVP has transformed the traditional consensual and deliberative pattern of Swiss policy‐making style into one which is geared towards less accommodation and a higher simplicity of political talk, there is still remarkable resilience against this new style of political interaction.

The question, ‘which kind of democratic governance people prefer’, has moved to the forefront in current democracy research. This article uses existing hypotheses on democratic preferences as an input and employs an advanced research design to find out what citizens want if they had engaged in deliberation and reflection. We conducted an online-experiment with a deliberative treatment asking 256 German citizens in 2016. Our findings show that deliberation does not lead to more informed or differential preferences for governance models compared with getting informed or ‘thinking twice’. One reason are high levels of consistency between basic democratic values and governance choices already before the experiment, contradicting our initial assumption that preferences about democracy are generally ill-formed. Overall, our experiment shows that post-deliberative democratic preferences are mainly driven by issue salience and disenchantment with the actual shape of representative democracy. We detect a sort of a ‘populist’ impulse where disenchantment conduces to calls for a stronger voice of the ‘people’ and participatory governance models, irrespective of their concrete design.

In the study of deliberation, a largely under‐explored area is why some participants polarise their opinion after deliberation and why others moderate them. Opinion polarisation is usually considered a suspicious outcome of deliberation, while moderation is seen as a desirable one. This article takes issue with this view. Results from a Finnish deliberative experiment on immigration show that polarisers and moderators were not different in socioeconomic, cognitive or affective profiles. Moreover, both polarisation and moderation can entail deliberatively desired pathways: in the experiment, both polarisers and moderators learned during deliberation, levels of empathy were fairly high on both sides, and group pressures barely mattered. Finally, the low physical presence of immigrants in some discussion groups was associated with polarisation in the anti‐immigrant direction, bolstering longstanding claims regarding the importance of presence for democratic politics.

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