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How do local communities effectively build peace and reconciliation before, during and after open violence? This trailblazing book gives practical examples, from the Global North, the former Soviet bloc and Global South, on communities addressing conflict in divided and contested societies. The book draws on a range of critical perspectives and practitioner analyses. The diverse case studies demonstrate the considerable knowledge, skills, commitment, courage and relationships within local communities that a critical community development approach can support and encourage. Concluding with activists' perspectives on working with the challenges of violence, the book offers insights for both an understanding of the root causes of conflict and for bottom-up peacebuilding

This interdisciplinary collection charts the experiences of young people in places of spatial marginality around the world, dismantling the privileging of urban youth, urban locations and urban ways of life in youth studies and beyond. Expert authors investigate different dimensions of spatiality including citizenship, materiality and belonging, and develop new understandings of the complex relationships between place, history, politics and education. From Australia to India, Myanmar to Sweden, and the UK to Central America, international examples from both the Global South and North help to illuminate wider issues of intergenerational change, social mobility and identity. By exploring young lives beyond the city, this book establishes different ways of thinking from a position of spatial marginality

Funding: COPS is a sub-study of EAVE II, which is funded by the Medical Research Council (MR/R008345/1) with the support of BREATHE - The Health Data Research Hub for Respiratory Health [MC_PC_19004; AS], which is funded through the UK Research and Innovation Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and delivered through Health Data Research UK. Additional support has been provided through Public Health Scotland and Scottish Government DG Health and Social Care and the Data and Connectivity National Core Study, led by Health Data Research UK in partnership with the Office for National Statistics and funded by UK Research and Innovation. COPS has received additional funding from Tommy's charity and support from Sands charity. SJS is funded by a Wellcome Trust Clinical Career Development Fellowship (209560/Z/17/Z; SJS). SVK acknowledges funding from a NRS Senior Clinical Fellowship (SCAF/15/02; SVK), the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_00022/2; SVK) and the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office (SPHSU17; SVK). ; Population-level data on COVID-19 vaccine uptake in pregnancy and SARS-CoV-2 infection outcomes are lacking. We describe COVID-19 vaccine uptake and SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnant women in Scotland, using whole population data from a national, prospective cohort. Between the start of COVID-19 vaccine programme in Scotland, on 8 December 2020, and 31 October 2021, 25,917 COVID-19 vaccinations were given to 18,457 pregnant women. Vaccine coverage was substantially lower in pregnant women than in the general female population 18-44 years: 32.3% of women giving birth in October 2021 had two doses of vaccine compared to 77.4% in all women. The extended perinatal mortality rate for women who gave birth within 28 days of a COVID-19 diagnosis was 22.6 per 1,000 births (95% CI 12.9-38.5; pandemic background rate 5.6 per 1,000 births (452/80,456; 95% CI 5.1-6.2). 77.4% (3,833/ 4,950; 95% CI 76.2-78.6) of SARS-CoV-2 infections, 90.9% (748/823; 95% CI 88.7-92.7) of SARS-CoV-2 associated with hospital admission, and ...

BACKGROUND: Cervical cancer (CC) remains a leading cause of gynaecological cancer-related mortality world wide and constitutes the third most common malignancy in women. The RAIDs consortium (http://www.raids-fp7.eu/) conducted a prospective European study [BioRAIDs (NCT02428842)] with the objective to stratify CC patients for innovative treatments. A "metagene" of genomic markers in the PI3K pathway and epigenetic regulators had been previously associated with poor outcome [2]. METHODS: To detect new, more specific, targets for treatment of patients who resist standard chemo-radiation, a high-dimensional Cox model was applied to define dominant molecular variants, copy number variations, and reverse phase protein arrays (RPPA). FINDINGS: Survival analysis on 89 patients with all omics data available, suggested loss-of-function (LOF) or activating molecular alterations in nine genes to be candidate biomarkers for worse prognosis in patients treated by chemo-radiation while LOF of ATRX, MED13 as well as CASP8 were associated with better prognosis. When protein expression data by RPPA were factored in, the supposedly low molecular weight and nuclear form, of beta-catenin, phosphorylated in Ser552 (pβ-Cat552), ranked highest for good prognosis, while pβ-Cat675 was associated with worse prognosis. INTERPRETATION: These findings call for molecularly targeted treatments involving p53, Wnt pathway, PI3K pathway, and epigenetic regulator genes. Pβ-Cat552 and pβ-Cat675 may be useful biomarkers to predict outcome to chemo-radiation, which targets the DNA repair axis. FUNDING: European Union's Seventh Program for research, technological development and demonstration (agreement N°304,810), the Fondation ARC pour la recherche contre le cancer.

BACKGROUND: Cervical cancer (CC) remains a leading cause of gynaecological cancer-related mortality world wide and constitutes the third most common malignancy in women. The RAIDs consortium (http://www.raids-fp7.eu/) conducted a prospective European study [BioRAIDs (NCT02428842)] with the objective to stratify CC patients for innovative treatments. A "metagene" of genomic markers in the PI3K pathway and epigenetic regulators had been previously associated with poor outcome [2]. METHODS: To detect new, more specific, targets for treatment of patients who resist standard chemo-radiation, a high-dimensional Cox model was applied to define dominant molecular variants, copy number variations, and reverse phase protein arrays (RPPA). FINDINGS: Survival analysis on 89 patients with all omics data available, suggested loss-of-function (LOF) or activating molecular alterations in nine genes to be candidate biomarkers for worse prognosis in patients treated by chemo-radiation while LOF of ATRX, MED13 as well as CASP8 were associated with better prognosis. When protein expression data by RPPA were factored in, the supposedly low molecular weight and nuclear form, of beta-catenin, phosphorylated in Ser552 (pβ-Cat552), ranked highest for good prognosis, while pβ-Cat675 was associated with worse prognosis. INTERPRETATION: These findings call for molecularly targeted treatments involving p53, Wnt pathway, PI3K pathway, and epigenetic regulator genes. Pβ-Cat552 and pβ-Cat675 may be useful biomarkers to predict outcome to chemo-radiation, which targets the DNA repair axis. FUNDING: European Union's Seventh Program for research, technological development and demonstration (agreement N°304,810), the Fondation ARC pour la recherche contre le cancer.

Critical Conversations are held by members of the greater Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace network in the activist tradition of reflecting on our public engagement and collectively discovering ways of deepening our action. The particpants are selected based on their submissions (Expressions of Interest) in response to the Call for Participation in the Critcial Conversations disseminated through the ESJP website (esjp.org). For years, we have gathered in locations immersed in nature. In 2018 and 2019, the gathering took place in Cala Munda, organized by Caroline Baillie and Eric Feinblatt, in the beautiful Catskills mountains in upstate New York in the U.S.A.
We want to feel our connection with the land while we engage in critical conversations on the intersection of the engineering field with social justice and peace. Caroline Baillie facilitates these conversations employing forest pedagogy. Through this pedagogy, we open our hearts to the forest for seeking guidance on how our profession can help restore, heal, and serve people, planet, and life instead of its current practice of destroying, pillaging, and harming nature.
In the throes of the coronavirus pandemic, the urgency of action was evident in 2020 like never before. On June 26 and 27, 2020, a group of up to 40 educators, researchers, activists, and field practitioners, from 4 continents, met virtually for the 4th Annual Critical Conversations – almost thrice as large as the 2018 and 2019 groups that met in-person. The virtual format allowed for broader participation – both in numbers as well as geographical locations. Though we were physically separated in the online gathering, situated in our respective modern, often disconnected-from-nature enclaves, our hearts and minds were engaged in envisioning transition to a just and egalitarian society. In keeping with the need of the moment, our focus was on brainstorming action projects that we can implement in the near future. The retreat facilitated the formation of action teams, which spent the summer discussing possible action items moving forward. These teams are now looking for a more permanent structure with team leaders, team members, an infrastructure, and social media presence. This is a call to action!

We carried out these deliberations in an open-space format, wherein the agenda for the two days was set by the participants. In the two sessions on day one, using this participatory approach, we were able to sift six main themes that participants were interested in exploring in-depth. On day two, we divided ourselves into six teams and each team took a deeper dive into their theme of choice. Five of these teams have written summaries of their deliberations and proposed their Calls to Action for the engineering community, which we report below.

Cardiac fibrosis is a final common pathology in inherited and acquired heart diseases that causes cardiac electrical and pump failure. Here, we use systems genetics to identify a pro-fibrotic gene network in the diseased heart and show that this network is regulated by the E3 ubiquitin ligase WWP2, specifically by the WWP2-N terminal isoform. Importantly, the WWP2-regulated pro-fibrotic gene network is conserved across different cardiac diseases characterized by fibrosis: human and murine dilated cardiomyopathy and repaired tetralogy of Fallot. Transgenic mice lacking the N-terminal region of the WWP2 protein show improved cardiac function and reduced myocardial fibrosis in response to pressure overload or myocardial infarction. In primary cardiac fibroblasts, WWP2 positively regulates the expression of pro-fibrotic markers and extracellular matrix genes. TGFβ1 stimulation promotes nuclear translocation of the WWP2 isoforms containing the N-terminal region and their interaction with SMAD2. WWP2 mediates the TGFβ1-induced nucleocytoplasmic shuttling and transcriptional activity of SMAD2. ; The research was primarily supported by National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Singapore grant NMRC/CBRG/0106/2016 (to E.P.) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Ph.D. Studentship grant FS/11/25/28740 (to E.P). We acknowledge additional funding support from European Union FP7 CardioNeT-ITN-289600 (to E.L.-P., S.A.C., and P.J.R.B.), Heart Research UK (to P.J.R.B.), NIHR CV BRU of Royal Brompton and Harefield, NHS Foundation Trust (to S.A.C. and P.J.R.B.), BHF (to S.A.C.), Leducq Foundation (to S.A.C.), MRC UK (to S.A.C.), BHF Program Grant no. RG/15/5/31446 (to C.E. and E.P.). M.P. was supported by Praemium Academiae award of the Czech Academy of Sciences and grant 14-36804G from the Czech Science Foundation. ; Sí

OBJECTIVE: Current strategies to guide selection of neoadjuvant therapy in oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) are inadequate. We assessed the ability of a DNA damage immune response (DDIR) assay to predict response following neoadjuvant chemotherapy in OAC. DESIGN: Transcriptional profiling of 273 formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded prechemotherapy endoscopic OAC biopsies was performed. All patients were treated with platinum-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy and resection between 2003 and 2014 at four centres in the Oesophageal Cancer Clinical and Molecular Stratification consortium. CD8 and programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) immunohistochemical staining was assessed in matched resection specimens from 126 cases. Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazards regression analysis were applied according to DDIR status for recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS). RESULTS: A total of 66 OAC samples (24%) were DDIR positive with the remaining 207 samples (76%) being DDIR negative. DDIR assay positivity was associated with improved RFS (HR: 0.61; 95% CI 0.38 to 0.98; p=0.042) and OS (HR: 0.52; 95% CI 0.31 to 0.88; p=0.015) following multivariate analysis. DDIR-positive patients had a higher pathological response rate (p=0.033), lower nodal burden (p=0.026) and reduced circumferential margin involvement (p=0.007). No difference in OS was observed according to DDIR status in an independent surgery-alone dataset.DDIR-positive OAC tumours were also associated with the presence of CD8+ lymphocytes (intratumoural: p<0.001; stromal: p=0.026) as well as PD-L1 expression (intratumoural: p=0.047; stromal: p=0.025). CONCLUSION: The DDIR assay is strongly predictive of benefit from DNA-damaging neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by surgical resection and is associated with a proinflammatory microenvironment in OAC. ; This work was supported by the Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Charitable Fund administered by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, the Cancer Research UK Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre Initiative, Invest Northern Ireland and Almac Diagnostics. Oesophageal Cancer Clinical and Molecular Stratification (OCCAMS) was funded by a programme grant from Cancer Research UK (RG66287). We would like to thank the Human Research Tissue Bank, which is supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre from Addenbrooke's Hospital. Additional infrastructure support was provided from the CRUK funded Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre. RF has programmatic funding from the Medical Research Council and infrastructure support from the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and the Cambridge Experimental Medicine Centre. Tissue samples used in this research were received from the Northern Ireland Biobank, which is funded by HSC Research and Development Division of the Public Health Agency in Northern Ireland and Cancer Research UK through the Belfast Cancer Research UK Centre and the Northern Ireland Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre; additional support was received from the Friends of the Cancer Centre. The Northern Ireland Molecular Pathology Laboratory has received funding from Cancer Research UK, the Friends of the Cancer Centre and the Sean Crummey Foundation. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no 721906. The OCCAMS Study Group is a multicentre UK collaboration.

We are increasingly confronted with severe social and economic impacts of environmental degradation all over the world. From a valuation perspective, environmental problems and conflicts originate from trade-offs between values. The urgency and importance to integrate nature's diverse values in decisions and actions stand out more than ever. Valuation, in its broad sense of 'assigning importance', is inherently part of most decisions on natural resource and land use. Scholars from different traditions -while moving from heuristic interdisciplinary debate to applied transdisciplinary science- now acknowledge the need for combining multiple disciplines and methods to represent the diverse set of values of nature. This growing group of scientists and practitioners share the ambition to explore how combinations of ecological, socio-cultural and economic valuation tools can support real-life resource and land use decision-making. The current sustainability challenges and the ineffectiveness of single-value approaches to offer relief demonstrate that continuing along a single path is no option. We advocate for the adherence of a plural valuation culture and its establishment as a common practice, by contesting and complementing ineffective and discriminatory single-value approaches. In policy and decision contexts with a willingness to improve sustainability, integrated valuation approaches can be blended in existing processes, whereas in contexts of power asymmetries or environmental conflicts, integrated valuation can promote the inclusion of diverse values through action research and support the struggle for social and environmental justice. The special issue and this editorial synthesis paper bring together lessons from pioneer case studies and research papers, synthesizing main challenges and setting out priorities for the years to come for the field of integrated valuation. ; Peer reviewed

The COVID-19 pandemic was not a great 'equaliser', but rather an event whose impact intersected with pre-existing inequalities affecting different people, places, and geographic scales. Nowhere is this more apparent than in housing. Written by an international group of experts, this book casts light on how the virus has impacted the experience of home and housing through the lens of wider urban processes around transportation, land use, planning policy, racism, and inequality. Case studies from around the world examine issues around gentrification, housing processes, design, systems, finance and policy. Offering crucial insights for reforming cities to be more resilient to future crises, this is an invaluable resource for scholars and policy makers alike