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Refugee integration, one long-term solution to the large number of people fleeing their home countries, constitutes a challenge for both refugees and host societies. ICT and especially online peer groups seem promising to support this process. Building on literature demonstrating the societal benefits of peer groups, this paper proposes a novel peer-group-based approach to address refugee integration and introduces both an online and offline realization. A randomized field experiment in cooperation with public (refugee) services and a non-governmental organization makes it possible to expand existing research by quantitatively demonstrating societal benefits of online peer groups and ICT for refugee integration. Further, this paper is the first to assess the effectiveness of online and offline peer groups in one experimental setup comparatively. Results show that peer groups provide substantial value with respect to the integration domains social bridges, social bonds, rights and citizenship as well as safety and stability. While the outcome of the various integration domains differs for online and offline peer groups, participants’ adoption rates were higher for online peer groups., publishedVersion

The success and growth of online peer groups has evoked interest in their potential to provide support for their members who share similar challenges. While there is a growing body of knowledge in this field, there is still a lack of understanding social support in online peer groups for career counseling, a prevention for youth unemployment. The unique dataset underlying our explorative study contains messages written by pupils in online peer groups for career counseling at the German Federal Employment Agency. Applying content analysis and logistic regression analysis we analyze which types of social support arise in the online peer groups depending on peers’ characteristics. We show that the online peer groups provide types of social support traditional one-on-one counseling cannot offer. Our analysis indicates that depending on peers’ gender and average school grade, the prevalence of the different types of social support changes. To a smaller extent this is also the case for differences in migration background. Our results contribute to a better understanding of social support in online peer groups for career counseling to address youth unemployment.

To investigate the societal value of digital peer groups in the context of youth unemployment, one of society’s most pressing problems, we developed a novel mobile peer-group-based career counselin...

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a considerable health problem among adolescents. Affect regulation by means of self-injury may promote the maintenance of NSSI. However, existing findings have limited ecological validity. The present study aimed to assess emotional and interpersonal states preceding and following incidents of NSSI in female adolescents. Adolescents with NSSI-disorder completed ecological momentary assessments of affective and interpersonal states on an hourly basis for multiple days. Multilevel mixed-effect regression analyses were conducted to assess antecedences and consequences of acts of self-injury. Data from n = 73 female adolescents covering a total of 52 acts of self-injury were available for analyses. The urge to self-injure on the between subject-level and negative affect on the within-level were best predictors of self-injury. Surprisingly, self-injury increased negative affect and decreased feelings of attachment (mother only) in the following hour. In line with findings in adults, results illustrate the important association between negative affect and self-injury in female adolescents. However, the occurrence of NSSI itself was related to concurrent increases in negative affect, and even prospectively predicted a consecutive increase in negative affect. Therefore, improvements of negative affect following (or during) self-injury, as previously reported, are at best short-lived (

Global warming affects the thermal stratification of freshwater lakes, and thus can lead to thermocline deepening. To follow the direct and indirect effects of thermocline shifts on processes at the sediment–water interface, the thermoclines in six of twelve lake enclosures were deepened by pumping warm surface water below the thermocline. Hypolimnetic temperatures increased and oxygen concentrations decreased due to the treatment. Path modeling suggests a correlation of the treatment to epilimnetic chlorophytes and hypolimnetic diatoms, while the dominant cryptophytes and cyanobacteria remained unaffected by the treatment. Sedimentation rates, ranging between 0.1 and 1.9 g m−2 day−1 per enclosure, correlated strongly with the selected phytoplankton groups, but were not affected by the treatment. Concentrations of elements (Ba, Mn, S, Sr), nutrients (NH4 +, PO4 3−, Si), and greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, N2O) in the upper centimeter of the sediment were not affected by the hypolimnetic changes. Methane and carbon dioxide emission from the enclosures to the atmosphere were negligible. Bacterial and viral abundance in sediments were not affected by the treatment. Results suggest that the benthic ecosystem remains unaffected by slight changes in the pelagial. Further, we conclude that short-term warming does not increase greenhouse gas emissions from temperate, deep, oligo-mesotrophic lakes.

Information systems (IS) are a key enabler to improve effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector. The realization of large IS projects, however, still remains a challenge in public administrations. One reason is that the complex task of IT governance in federal structures requires contributions from a large number of stakeholders. To address this challenge, we conducted Action Design Research in cooperation with different institutions of the German labor market and developed a requirements engineering process with a corresponding IT governance in the public sector that takes complex federal structures into account. The process was successfully implemented at the German Federal Employment Agency and proved valuable to deal with 146 municipal requirements regarding an IS in the context of unemployment benefits. Moreover, we derived four general success factors with a special attention on the interleaving of requirements engineering process and IT governance.

Salinity has a strong impact on bacterial community composition such that freshwater bacterial communities are very different from those in seawater. By contrast, little is known about the composition and diversity of the bacterial community in the sediments (bacteriobenthos) at the freshwater-seawater transition (mesohaline conditions). In this study, partial 16S-rRNA sequences were used to investigate the bacterial community at five stations, representing almost freshwater (oligohaline) to marine conditions, in the Baltic Sea. Samples were obtained from the silty, top-layer (0–2.5 cm) sediments with mostly oxygenated conditions. The long water residence time characteristic of the Baltic Sea, was predicted to enable the development of autochthonous bacteriobenthos at mesohaline conditions. Our results showed that, similar to the water column, salinity is a major factor in structuring the bacteriobenthos and that there is no loss of bacterial richness at intermediate salinities. The bacterial communities of marine, mesohaline, and oligohaline sediments differed in terms of the relative rRNA abundances of the major bacterial phyla/classes. At mesohaline conditions typical marine and oligohaline operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were abundant. Putative unique OTUs in mesohaline sediments were present only at low abundances, suggesting that the mesohaline environment consists mainly of marine and oligohaline bacteria with a broad salinity tolerance. Our study provides a first overview of the diversity patterns and composition of bacteria in the sediments along the Baltic Sea salinity gradient as well as new insights into the bacteriobenthos at mesohaline conditions. The study was funded by the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research (IOW), KJ were funded by the DFG project MicroFun (JU367/15-1), JK by the Leibniz Association project TemBi (SAW-2011-IGB-2). The study was funded by the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research (IOW), KJ were funded by the DFG project MicroFun (JU367/15-1), JK by the Leibniz Association project TemBi (SAW-2011-IGB-2).

The increasing use of Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) has been resulting in important changes in individual work practices, and is subject of numerous studies. From both a theoretical and a practical perspective, there is a lack of well-founded knowledge on how the implementation of ESN can be supported best to trigger both learning and change processes in the enterprise. For such processes, managers have a strong multiplying and "role model" effect. Therefore, following a case study approach, we conducted 15 interviews with managers at different hierarchical levels at a financial services provider to identify factors obstructing the successful ESN introduction and implementation. Understanding these obstructing factors is an important prerequisite for the competency development of both management and staff for a successful ESN implementation.

The probability of IT project failures can be mitigated more successfully when discovered early. To support a more insightful management of IT projects, which may also facilitate an early detection of IT project failures, transparency regarding a project's cash flows shall be increased. Therefore, an appropriate analysis of a project's benefits, costs, requirements, their respective risks and interdependencies is inevitable. However, to date, in requirements engineering only few methods exist that appropriately consider these factors when estimating the ex ante project business case. Furthermore, empirical studies reveal that a lot of risk factors emerge during the runtime of projects why the ex ante valuation of IT projects even with respect to requirements seems insufficient. Therefore, using the Action Design Research approach, we design, apply, and evaluate a practicable method for value-based continuous IT project steering especially for large-scale IT projects.

The hyper-variable V4 and V9 regions of the small subunit (SSU) rDNA have been targeted for assessing environmental diversity of microbial eukaryotes using next generation sequencing technologies. Here, we explore how the genetic distances among these short fragments compare with the distances obtained from near full-length SSU-rDNA sequences by comparing all pairwise estimates, as well as within and among species of ciliates. Results show that pairwise distances from V4 more closely match the near full-length SSU-rDNA and are more comparable with previous studies based on much longer SSU-rDNA fragments, then pairwise distances from V9. Thus, studies that use the V4 will estimate similar values of phylotype richness and community structure as would have been estimated using the full-length SSU-rDNA.

Sedimentary coastal ecosystems like the European Wadden Sea in the northeastern Atlantic harbor large populations of burrowing infauna, such as arenicolide polychaetes. These 'ecosystem engineering' macrofaunal organisms destabilize sediments by reworking and irrigat- ing them, leading to a reorganization of sediment physicochemical state and bacterial communi- ties. Here, we tested the effects of the lugworm Arenicola marina on intertidal psammophilic pro- tistan community diversity and structure in a field experiment. We applied pyrosequencing and community structure analyses to samples in which we manipulated lugworm densities. Irrespec- tive of the presence or absence of the lugworm, protistan abundance and diversity (mostly diatoms and ciliates) was higher in oxic surface sediments compared to anoxic subsurface sediments. In the presence of A. marina, protistan abundances and diversity decreased decisively in surface as well as in subsurface bulk sediment. Also, the protistan community composition differed remark- ably, with only 28% of all phylotypes (ntotal = 855) shared between habitats with and without lug- worms. Twenty-seven percent of all taxa were detected exclusively in the presence of lugworms, and 62% of the taxa found in the oxic subsurface sediment surrounding the lugworm burrow were limited to this distinct microenvironment. This suggests that lugworm burrows provide an ecolog- ical niche potentially hosting protist taxa that are adapted to fluctuating oxygen supply. We con- clude that though the activities of A. marina reduce the overall abundance of protists, they select for very specific and well-adapted taxa. This adds to the overall protistan diversity in intertidal sandflats on larger spatial scales. Most likely, the observed effects of lugworms on protistan com- munity structure and composition are due to a combination of direct trophic and indirect sedi- ment- mediated effects, such as disturbance by reworking the sediment, oxygen supply by burrow ventilation and increased pore water exchange due to bioadvection.