States use confinement in prisons to punish people who break the regulations and laws established in every society. Although prison limits the right to freedom by constraining the convict's options ...for self-realisation and social participation, the right to education, like the other rights, remains in force, prevailing at least in, or over and above, the context of prison. This study analyses education from the perspective of human rights and the exercise of fundamental rights in Spanish prisons by studying the legal and regulatory framework and the basic characteristics of educational paths prior to prison. It focuses on a context in which provision of both formal and informal education for women prisoners still shows deficiencies in education and training. The study also evaluates the importance of protecting the right to education in places of punishment, and the influence of education on social reintegration processes. Its goal is to analyse the diverse living conditions of women prisoners, an especially vulnerable group in society from both the socio-educational and the gender perspective. Finally, we recommend that states not only implement a full, high-quality education system in prisons but also ensure professional and contextualised work suitable to the characteristics of those confined to prison.
Around 40% of patients with breast cancer will present with a recurrence of the disease. Chemotherapy is recommended for patients with recurrent hormone-independent or hormone-refractory breast ...cancer and almost all patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) receive chemotherapy during their medical history. Nanoparticle albuminbound (nab)-paclitaxel is a solvent-free, 130-nanometer particle formulation of paclitaxel. Nab-paclitaxel can be administered to all patients for whom the treatment choice is a taxane. In this review, 6 patient profiles for which nabpaclitaxel may be particularly useful are described and analyzed: (i) as first-line treatment of MBC, (ii) as second-line treatment of MBC after oral chemotherapy, (iii) after a standard taxane, (iv) as third-line treatment after a standard taxane and oral chemotherapy, (v) for patients with HER2-positive MBC and (vi) for patients with intolerance to standard taxanes. Nab-paclitaxel is a rational treatment choice for patients with MBC in different settings, as well as for those with prior exposure to a standard taxane.
Survival after metastatic cancer has improved at the cost of increased presentation with metastatic spinal disease. For patients with pathologic spinal fractures and/or spinal cord compression, ...surgical intervention may relieve pain and improve quality of life. Surgery is generally considered to be inappropriate if anticipated survival is < 3 months. The aim of this international multicenter study was to analyze data from patients who died within 3 months or 2 years after surgery, to identify preoperative factors associated with poor or good survival, and to avoid inappropriate selection of patients for surgery in the future.
A total of 1,266 patients underwent surgery for impending pathologic fractures and/or neurologic deficits and were prospectively observed. Data collected included tumor characteristics, preoperative fitness (American Society of Anesthesiologists advisory ASA), neurologic status (Frankel scale), performance (Karnofsky performance score KPS), and quality of life (EuroQol five-dimensions questionnaire EQ-5D). Outcomes were survival at 3 months and 2 years postsurgery. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses were used to find preoperative factors associated with short-term and long-term survival.
In univariable analysis, age, emergency surgery, KPS, EQ-5D, ASA, Frankel, and Tokuhashi/Tomita scores were significantly associated with short survival. In multivariable analysis, KPS and age were significantly associated with short survival (odds ratio OR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.15 to 1.62; and OR, 1.14; 95% CI, 1.02 to 1.27, respectively). Associated with longer survival in univariable analysis were age, number of levels included in surgery, KPS, EQ-5D, Frankel, and Tokuhashi/Tomita scores. In multivariable analysis, the number of levels included in surgery (OR, 1.21; 95% CI, 1.06 to 1.38) and primary tumor type were significantly associated with longer survival.
Poor performance status at presentation is the strongest indicator of poor short-term survival, whereas low disease load and favorable tumor histology are associated with longer-term survival.
Effective use of quantitative metrics is fundamental to guiding innovation toward more sustainable chemicals. At present, metrics employed in Green Chemistry, such as the E-factor, Process Mass ...Intensity, or Energy Intensity, focus on mass or energy efficiency at specific levels – reaction, process, or plant. However, a more holistic approach is needed, especially at early stages of research and development, utilising more complex impact-based indicators from Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) to gain a deeper understanding of the environmental footprint of chemical systems. To date, the need to couple mass- and energy-based process metrics with life cycle impacts for more comprehensive assessments has been qualitatively discussed but not quantitatively demonstrated. Therefore, this study quantifies the level of correlation and linkages between five mass- and energy-based metrics and 16 LCA indicator scores by leveraging data for over 700 chemical manufacturing processes. The primary finding is the weak correlations between process metrics and life cycle impacts, as the former approach lacks appropriate weights for each input and output to account for their life cycle environmental implications. While improving process efficiency can lead to lower overall environmental impact, enhanced granularity for comparing alternative chemical routes provides insights into the relative impact levels throughout the supply chain, particularly concerning raw materials as they are major contributors to life cycle environmental impacts. This study also provides practical insights for expanding the application of LCA by making it more accessible to the research community through simplified approaches and working collaboratively with LCA practitioners.
Neutral Ag(
iii
) complexes stabilised with just monodentate ligands are here unambiguously established. In a series of square-planar (CF
3
)
3
Ag(L) compounds with hard and soft Group 15 donor ...ligands, L, the metal center has been found to exhibit substantial acidity favouring apical coordination of an additional ligand under no coordination constraints.
Neutral silver(
iii
) compounds stabilised with just monodentate ligands are found to exhibit a distinct tendency to associate an additional ligand at the apical position. They include the first documented compound with a Ag(
iii
)-As bond.
Heteropolynuclear complexes (CNC)(PPh3)PtM(PPh3)ClO4 M=Au (1), Ag (2) and {Pt(CNC)(PPh3)}2MClO4 M=Ag (3), Au (4); CNC=2,6‐diphenylpyridinate were prepared and studied by X‐ray crystallography, ...spectroscopic techniques, and DFT calculations. The X‐ray crystal structures of 1, 3, and 4 confirmed the existence of Pt−M bonds and M⋅⋅⋅Cipso interactions involving one of the phenyl fragments of CNC. Their NMR spectra showed the persistence of the Pt−M interactions in solution and also revealed an intramolecular metronome‐like dynamic process consisting of back‐and‐forth motion of the acidic M fragments along the C‐Pt‐C axis. DFT calculations on these complexes identified two main orbital interactions between the PtCNC and M+ fragments, namely, donation from the former to a vacant orbital of the latter and much weaker backdonation from the acidic M to the Pt fragment. Overall, the strength of the Pt⋅⋅⋅M interactions is higher for the gold compounds than for their silver counterparts. The interaction between the acidic center (silver or gold) and the carbon atom of one of the phenylene rings in these heteropolymetallic complexes can be envisaged as the first step in a process of interchange of aryl ligands. However, the ligand exchange cannot progress further due to the polydentate nature of the CNC ligand, and therefore these structures can be considered as frozen snapshots of a transmetalation reaction that has been arrested at different stages of the process.
Like a metronome: Heterometallic complexes (CNC)(PPh3)PtM(PPh3)ClO4 and {Pt(CNC)(PPh3)}2MClO4 (M=Ag, Au; CNC=2,6‐diphenylpyridinate) show a dynamic behavior in solution that can be described as metronome‐like a back‐and‐forth motion of the acidic M fragments along the C‐Pt‐C axis (see figure). Nevertheless, their X‐ray structures show strong M−C interactions and can be considered as frozen snapshots of a transmetalation reaction that has been arrested at different stages of the process.
BackgroundAnemia is a serious global health problem particularly in malaria and Soil-transmitted helminths (STH) co-endemic areas, where those parasitic infections can influence the anemia severity. ...The present analysis aimed to assess the prevalence and associated risk factors of anemia in malaria and STH co-endemic areas.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional survey between October 2020 and January 2021 in the Bata district. Venous blood was collected for hemoglobin levels assessment using the HemoCue Hb201. Anemia was defined based on the WHO threshold. Plasmodium infection was diagnosed using the microscopy technique and the Kato-Katz technique was used for STH egg identification in stool samples. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to assess factors associated with anemia. ResultsA total of 339 participants were included in this analysis, with a mean age of 24.4 (SD=23.7) and 64 (19%) aged less than 5 years. A total of 187 (55%) participants were female, while 119 (35.1%) and 79 (23.3%) of them lived in peri-urban and rural areas, respectively. The prevalence of anemia was 77% (95%CI: 72 – 82). Among the anemic population, severe anemia represents 6% (17/262), while moderate and mild anemia represents 60% (157/262) and 34% (88/262), respectively. Anemia was associated with age (p<0.001) and locality (p=0.03). Compared to participants aged 1–5 years, those aged 6–14 years (aOR=0.39; 95%CI: 0.14 – 0.95, p-value=0.048) and those aged more than 14 years (aOR=0.18; 95%CI: 0.06 – 0.41, p-value<0.001) had a lower odd of anemia. Compared to urban areas, peri-urban areas had a high odd of anemia (aOR:1.15; 95%CI:1.24 – 4.87, p-value=0.01).ConclusionAnemia prevalence is high in the Bata district calling for more research on the determinants of the disease in the country. Our results indicate old age and peri-urban areas as the main factors associated with anemia in the Bata district.
The transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) is a key element of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I antigen processing and presentation pathway. Nonfunctional TAP ...complexes impair the translocation of cytosol-derived proteolytic peptides to the endoplasmic reticulum lumen. This drastic reduction in the available peptide repertoire leads to a significant decrease in MHC class I cell surface expression. Using mass spectrometry, different studies have analyzed the cellular MHC class I ligandome from TAP-deficient cells, but the analysis of the parental proteins, the source of these ligands, still deserves an in-depth analysis. In the present report, several bioinformatics protocols were applied to investigate the nature of parental proteins for the previously identified TAP-independent MHC class I ligands. Antigen processing in TAP-deficient cells mainly focused on small, abundant or highly integral transmembrane proteins of the cellular proteome. This process involved abundant proteins of the central RNA metabolism. In addition, TAP-independent ligands were preferentially cleaved from the N- and C-terminal ends with respect to the central regions of the parental proteins. The abundance of glycine, proline and aromatic residues in the C-terminal sequences from TAP-independently processed proteins allows the accessibility and specificity required for the proteolytic activities that generates the TAP-independent ligandome. This limited proteolytic activity towards a set of preferred proteins in a TAP-negative environment would therefore suffice to promote the survival of TAP-deficient individuals.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Tourism plays an important role in the economic development of several regions over the world. Imbalances in the activity levels throughout the year will condition the positive effects generated by ...the sector given that work stability and economic flows are dependent upon it. The measurement of seasonality based on indicators that are built using individual variables offers only a partial picture of the situation, or even contradictory results subject to which data were taken as a reference. This paper proposes a new system to measure seasonality. It is based on a DP
2
synthetic indicator that includes both, supply and demand variables and is able to determine comprehensively how intense seasonality is. This method, which is replicable in any region, has been applied to the regions of Spain. It has been determined that the areas with a better annual stability are Madrid and the Canary Islands. This indicator also allows us to analyze the amount of information provided by each variable when constructing the indicator, as well as identifying the most relevant variables when explaining regional disparities.
•A new selection rule for Contextual Bandits and single-step Reinforcement Learning.•The use of empirical approximations to the Bayes’rule is an effective approach.•This technique arrived second at ...new Challenges for Exploration & Exploitation 3.
Machine and Statistical Learning techniques are used in almost all online advertisement systems. The problem of discovering which content is more demanded (e.g. receive more clicks) can be modeled as a multi-armed bandit problem. Contextual bandits (i.e., bandits with covariates, side information or associative reinforcement learning) associate, to each specific content, several features that define the “context” in which it appears (e.g. user, web page, time, region). This problem can be studied in the stochastic/statistical setting by means of the conditional probability paradigm using the Bayes’ theorem. However, for very large contextual information and/or real-time constraints, the exact calculation of the Bayes’ rule is computationally infeasible. In this article, we present a method that is able to handle large contextual information for learning in contextual-bandits problems. This method was tested in the Challenge on Yahoo! dataset at ICML2012’s Workshop “new Challenges for Exploration & Exploitation 3”, obtaining the second place. Its basic exploration policy is deterministic in the sense that for the same input data (as a time-series) the same results are obtained. We address the deterministic exploration vs. exploitation issue, explaining the way in which the proposed method deterministically finds an effective dynamic trade-off based solely in the input-data, in contrast to other methods that use a random number generator.
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