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Danubeland scapes have been a recurrent topic in the German-language literature of Southeastern Europe, especially in German literature from Romania, which was the only one to survive the end of the Second World War in the Eastern Bloc. They developed different forms on both-sides of the Iron Curtain. In the West, the Danubeservedas a frame work for the consolidation of a common identity of many disparate groups of former German minorities from Southeastern Europe under the collective name “Danube Swabians”. Additionally, writers from Romania who emi-grated to the West recalled in their works bothwonderful and frightening images of the lower Danube. In Romania, Danube landscapes are to be seen as attempts to negotiate the concept of homeland from a contemporary perspective after its appropriation by the patriotic literature of the court literati. They emergedas a stage for projecting new sensi-tivities: the suffering of isolation, economic misery and environmental pollution. Subversively narrated landscapes also set hidden signs of the memory of the isolated deten-tion camps on the periphery of the country. The transfor-mation of Danube landscapes is analysed by using literary examples after 1945.
Microplastics (MPs) are ubiquitous and persistent pollutants, and have been detected in a wide variety of media, from soils to aquatic systems. MPs, consisting primarily of polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyacrylamide polymers, have recently been found in 12% of samples of honey collected in Ecuador. Recently, MPs have also been identified in honey bees collected from apiaries in Copenhagen, Denmark, as well as nearby semiurban and rural areas. Given these documented exposures, assessment of their effects is critical for understanding the risks of MP exposure to honey bees. Exposure to polystyrene (PS)-MPs decreased diversity of the honey bee gut microbiota, followed by changes in gene expression related to oxidative damage, detoxification, and immunity. As a result, the aim of this perspective was to investigate whether wide-spread prevalence of MPs might have unintended negative effects on health and fitness of honey bees, as well as to draw the scientific community’s attention to the possible risks of MPs to the fitness of honey bees. Several research questions must be answered before MPs can be considered a potential threat to bees.