Time trends in educational inequalities in cancer mortality in Colombia, 1998-2012

Objectives: To evaluate trends in premature cancer mortality in Colombia by educational level in three periods: 1998-2002 with low healthcare insurance coverage, 2003-2007 with rapidly increasing coverage and finally 2008-2012 with almost universal coverage (2008-2012). Setting: Colombian population-based, national secondary mortality data. Participants: We included all (n=188 091) cancer deaths occurring in the age group 20-64 years between 1998 and 2012, excluding only cases with low levels of quality of registration (n=2902, 1.5%). Primary and secondary outcome measures: In this descriptive study, we linked mortality data of ages 20-64 years to census data to obtain age-standardised cancer mortality rates by educational level. Using Poisson regression, we modelled premature mortality by educational level estimating rate ratios (RR), relative index of inequality (RII) and the Slope Index of Inequality (SII). Results: Relative measures showed increased risks of dying among the lower educated compared to the highest educated; this tendency was stronger in women (RRprimary1.49; RRsecondary1.22, both p<0.0001) than in men (RRprimary 1.35; RRsecondary 1.11, both p<0.0001). In absolute terms (SII), cancer caused a difference per 100 000 deaths between the highest and lowest educated of 20.5 in males and 28.5 in females. RII was significantly higher among women and the younger age categories. RII decreased between the first and second periods; afterwards (2008-2012), it increased significantly back to their previous levels. Among women, no significant increases or declines in cancer mortality over time were observed in recent periods in the lowest educated group, whereas strong recent declines were observed in those with secondary education or higher. Conclusions: Educational inequalities in cancer mortality in Colombia are increasing in absolute and relative terms, and are concentrated in young age categories. This trend was not curbed by increases in healthcare insurance coverage. Policymakers should focus on improving equal access to prevention, early detection, diagnostic and treatment facilities

Educational inequality trends in mortality due to pneumonia in Colombia, 1998-2015

We aimed to explore the existence and trends of social inequalities related to pneumonia mortality in Colombian adults using education as a proxy of socioeconomic status. We obtained death certificates due to pneumonia and population data from Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística for 1998-2015. Educational level data were gathered from microdata of the Colombian Demography Health Surveys. Annual trends in Age Standardized Mortality Rates by sex and educational level were quantified by calculating the Estimated Annual Percentage Change (EAPC). We estimated Rate Ratios (RR) by using Poisson regressionmodels, comparing mortality of educational groups with mortality in the highest education group. We estimated the Relative Index of Inequality (RII) to assess changes in disparities, regressing mortality on the mid-point of the cumulative distribution of education, thereby considering the size of each educational group. All analyses were conducted in SAS®V.9.2. For adults 25+ years, the risk of dying was significantly higher among lower educated. The RRs depict increased risks of dying comparing lower and highest education level, and this tendency was stronger in woman than in men [RRprimary=2.34 (2.32-2.36), RRsecondary=1.77 (1.75-1.78) vs. RRprimary=1.83(1.81-1.85), RR secondary=1.51 (1.50-1.53)]. According to age groups, young adults (25-44 years) showed the largest inequality in terms of educational level; RRs for pneumonia mortality regarding to the tertiary educated groups show increased mortality in the lower and secondary educated, and these differences decreased with ages. RII in pneumonia mortality among adult men was 2.01 (95%CI 2.00-2.03) and in women 2.46 (95%CI 2.43-2.48). The RII was greatest at young ages, for both sexes. Time trends showed steadily significant increases for RII in both men and women (EAPCmen=3.8; EAPCwomen=2.6). Pneumonia mortality rates in adults evidenced a clear age-dependency, with lowest rates for young and much higher rates for senior adults. All estimated mortality rates were higher in men than in women

The Transformation of Conflicts into Relational Well-Being in Physical Education: GIAM Model

To educate the relational well-being in order to learn to live together in society is one of the main needs of modern physical education (PE). Teachers are in need of pedagogical models to instruct peaceful coexistence and transform possible conflicts into PE. The goal of this study was to determine the effect of a pedagogical model (GIAM model) designed for conflict transformation on the relational well-being of students in obligatory secondary school (ESO in Spain). This study was an empirical research (associative strategy, comparative study using mixed methods). A number of 287 valid students (M = 14.90; SD = 0.66) participated in this study from 4 different secondary schools (SSs): third ESO (SS1 (n = 75); SS3 (n = 45); SS4 (n = 86)) and fourth ESO (SS2 (n = 81)). A sequence of seven learning sessions was conducted, the intervention of the teachers on the GIAM model and the student’s motivational climate perception caused by this learning sequence was analyzed. The teachers who best adapted their intervention to the GIAM model obtained greater significant changes (p < 0.005) in favor of the relational well-being of their students. This research provides scientific evidence and intervention strategies for students to learn how to transform the conflicts, adopting a collaborating style based on reflection-for, -in- and on-motor action

Thermodynamic properties of binary HCP solution phases from special quasirandom structures

Three different special quasirandom structures (SQS) of the substitutional hcp $A_{1-x}B_x$ binary random solutions ($x=0.25$, 0.5, and 0.75) are presented. These structures are able to mimic the most important pair and multi-site correlation functions corresponding to perfectly random hcp solutions at those compositions. Due to the relatively small size of the generated structures, they can be used to calculate the properties of random hcp alloys via first-principles methods. The structures are relaxed in order to find their lowest energy configurations at each composition. In some cases, it was found that full relaxation resulted in complete loss of their parental symmetry as hcp so geometry optimizations in which no local relaxations are allowed were also performed. In general, the first-principles results for the seven binary systems (Cd-Mg, Mg-Zr, Al-Mg, Mo-Ru, Hf-Ti, Hf-Zr, and Ti-Zr) show good agreement with both formation enthalpy and lattice parameters measurements from experiments. It is concluded that the SQS's presented in this work can be widely used to study the behavior of random hcp solutions.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure