Jürgen Döbereiner : uma vida dedicada à ciência

Dr. Jürgen Döbereiner was born in Germany, on the 1st of November 1923, and lived in Brazil for 68 years during which time he developed a range of scientific projects in veterinary pathology and related disciplines. His main interests were the identification of new poisonous plants and mineral deficiencies and the causes of “cara inchada” (“swollen face” a periodontal disease) and botulism in livestock. This research has resulted in the improved health and saving of hundreds of thousands of animals, mainly cattle, annually, and is consequently of enormous economic value to the country. This contribution remains largely under appreciated. He was also involved in organizing diagnostic methods for identifying infectious diseases such as African swine fever and glanders in horses. One of his other major achievements has been the foundation and editing of specialized scientific journals for the documentation of veterinary science research results. At the beginning of his career in the 1950s, he and colleagues from the Institute for Animal Biology (IBA) were struggling to find a national scientific journal where research results from veterinary medicine could be published with practical application to the Brazilian reality. In consequence, the team founded “Arquivos do Instituto de Biologia Animal” and published three volumes (1959-1961). He then founded and edited “Pesquisa Agropecuária Brasileira” (The Brazilian Journal of Agricultural Research”) that included a veterinary section. A series of veterinary volumes were published (1966-1976). Finally, in 1978 he helped create the Brazilian College of Veterinary Pathology (CBPA) that published “Pesquisa Veterinária Brasileira” (The Brazilian Journal of Veterinary Research) from 1981. The main goal was to communicate the most relevant disease problems of Brazilian livestock, in particular pathology and related subjects such as epidemiology, clinical study series and laboratory diagnosis to field veterinarians and academics. Dr. Jürgen Döbereiner was president of CBPA (1978-2018) and chief editor of “Pesquisa Veterinária Brasileira” (1981-2018). He passed away on the 16th of October, 2018, at the age of 94 at his home in Seropédica/RJ, Brazil.Dr. Jürgen Döbereiner nasceu na Alemanha em 1 de novembro de 1923, durante 68 anos viveu no Brasil e desenvolveu trabalhos científicos no campo da patologia veterinária latu sensu. Sua contribuição científica de destaque foi em temas como plantas tóxicas de interesse pecuário, deficiências minerais em animais de produção, cara inchada (doença periodontal) dos ruminantes, botulismo e diagnóstico de doenças infecciosas. Estas pesquisas resultaram na melhoria da saúde e de centenas de milhares de animais, principalmente bovinos e, consequentemente, foram de enorme valor econômico para o país. Esta contribuição ainda permanece em grande parte subestimada. De grande destaque para a ciência brasileira foi ainda a sua atuação profissional na documentação científica de resultados de pesquisa. No início de sua carreira na década de 1950, Dr. Döbereiner e outros pesquisadores do Instituto de Biologia Animal (IBA) detectaram a necessidade de um periódico científico nacional para publicar resultados de pesquisas com aplicação pratica à realidade brasileira. Dessa iniciativa surgiram os Arquivos do Instituto de Biologia Animal, que publicou três fascículos (1959-1961), em seguida o Dr. Jürgen Döbereiner participou na fundação da revista Pesquisa Agropecuária Brasileira que publicou a Série Veterinária (1966-1976) e finalmente em 1978, houve a fundação do Colégio Brasileiro de Patologia Animal (CBPA) que publica desde 1981 a revista Pesquisa Veterinária Brasileira. Este periódico científico foi criado para apresentar à comunidade, principalmente veterinários de campo e professores, os principais problemas de saúde em animais de produção no Brasil, ou seja, patologia em seu sentido amplo, envolvendo as áreas de epidemiologia, clínica e diagnóstico laboratorial. Dr. Jürgen Döbereiner, que foi presidente do CBPA (1978-2018) e Editor-Chefe da revista Pesquisa Veterinária Brasileira (1981-2018), faleceu em casa, em 16 de outubro de 2018, aos 94 anos, no município de Seropédica/RJ

Retrospective Analysis of Patients With Prostate Cancer Initiating GnRH Agonists/Antagonists Therapy Using a German Claims Database: Epidemiological and Patient Outcomes

Objective: The objective of this study was to obtain real-world information on gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist/antagonist (GnRHa) therapy in patients with advanced prostate cancer (PCa).Materials and methods: Anonymized, routine healthcare claims data from approx. 75 German statutory health insurance funds from 2010–2015 (n = 4,205,227) were analyzed. Patients had an enrolment of 1 year before GnRHa, 1 index quarter of initial GnRHa prescription and ≥2 years of follow-up.Results: In total, 2,382 patients with PCa were eligible. The most frequent index therapy was leuprolide in 56.6%. The rank order of PCa comorbidity prevalence was consistent over time (% at index and 3-years of follow-up): hypertension (71.5; 85.0), hyperlipidemia (45.2; 60.8), cardiovascular disease (CVD) (35.7; 54.1), and diabetes (28.3; 36.2). Comparing pooled therapy classes (agonists, hybrids, and antagonist), no significant differences in the incidence of CVD or diabetes were observed. For hypertension, there was a significant increase for agonists (16.4%) compared to antagonists (6.9%, p = 0.022) and leuprolide hybrid group (11.6%, p = 0.006). During the follow-up period 23.9% of all PCa patients died. There were no significant differences concerning mortality rate and discontinuation rates between the cohorts. In total, 11.2% of all patients discontinued GnRHa after first prescription; the mean time to first switch to another GnRHa therapy was 100 days earlier for hybrids than for agonists (p = 0.016).Conclusion: This comparative retrospective analysis provides real-world information about healthcare characteristics and treatment patterns, highlighting the impact of different GnRHa on clinical outcomes for patients with advanced PCa in Germany

European Public School Report 2023: Preliminary results on student population, educational trajectories, mathematics achievement, and stakeholder perceptions

• Luxembourg is a highly diverse country in terms of the socioeconomic, sociocultural, and linguistic composition of its population. This diversity is reflected in the national education system with an increasing share of students speaking a language other than Luxembourgish and/or German at home. In order to deal more adequately with the increasing language diversity of the student population and to counter educational inequalities that presumably result (at least in part) from a curriculum that places high language expectations on a growing number of students, the Luxembourgish government has broadened the educational offer by introducing European public schools (EPS). These schools follow the European curriculum and allow students to select one main language of instruction among the offered language sections (i.e., German, French, and English). • By combining data from different sources (e.g., administrative student data, expert interviews with stakeholders, achievement scores in mathematics from the Luxembourg School Monitoring Programme “Épreuves Standardisées” - ÉpStan), the present report offers preliminary results on EPS in Luxembourg. They consist of (1) the societal demand for EPS; (2) the composition of the student population in EPS; (3) the perception of EPS by school management teams and parents, and tangible education outcomes in the form of (4) educational trajectories; and (5) academic achievement in mathematics among EPS students compared to their peers in schools following the Luxembourgish curriculum. Described below are the key preliminary findings for each of these aspects: (1) Since 2016, a total of six EPS have opened in different locations across Luxembourg and the amount of students attending EPS has increased considerably at both primary and secondary school level. With the number of applicants surpassing the number of places currently available in EPS, it can be concluded that there appears to be high demand for EPS. (2) With students having a low socioeconomic status (SES) and/or students speaking Portuguese at home taking up the offer of EPS less frequently than high SES students and/or students speaking French or English at home, the student population in EPS differs from the student population in schools following the Luxembourgish curriculum (e.g., nationality, language primarily spoken at home, SES). (3) School management teams and parents report a rather positive perception of EPS, with the extended linguistic offer (i.e., possibility to select a language section) being the main reason why parents select EPS for their child. (4) Looking at the educational trajectories of EPS students, preliminary results offer a tentative indication of EPS students showing less school delay than their peers in school following the Luxembourgish curriculum and high continuity in their educational trajectories (i.e., the vast majority of students remains in EPS instead of changing curriculum). (5) With regard to achievement in mathematics at primary school level, the present report indicates that students in EPS perform better than their peers in schools following the Luxembourgish curriculum. At secondary school level, EPS students perform better than their peers in Enseignement secondaire général - voie d'orientation (ESG) and in Enseignement secondaire général - voie de préparation (ESG-VP), while staying below the performance of Enseignement secondaire classique (ESC) students. Although low SES students or Portuguese speaking students in EPS show better achievement scores than their respective peers in schools following the Luxembourgish curriculum it is not yet possible to draw strong conclusions based on these preliminary findings as these student groups currently take up the EPS offer less frequently than their peers considered as advantaged in the context of schooling. Their number is currently too small to allow more robust and in-depth statistical analyses. • The present report’s findings, especially regarding the tangible educational student outcomes, however, must be considered as tentative due to important methodological limitations. Indeed, the small numbers of students in EPS, particularly so for student groups with specific background characteristics (e.g., low SES students, Portuguese speaking students), do not allow separate analyses based on language section, for example. Thus any identified pattern could be sensitive to the inclusion or exclusion of outliers (e.g., students with particularly high or low ÉpStan scores). In addition, the comprehensive EPS school system at secondary school level (i.e., common track) is compared to the ability-based tracked school system of schools following the Luxembourgish curriculum, which limits the interpretability of secondary school data. Regarding the academic achievement tasks in mathematics, it should be noted that they were developed using education standards of the Luxembourgish curriculum. It is thus possible that achievement was underestimated for EPS students (e.g., assessment of mathematical concepts that have not yet been introduced in EPS). To this date, the ÉpStan administered in EPS only assessed academic achievement in mathematics for which a bigger overlap between curricula is assumed than for language subjects (e.g., German, French). Current psychometric shortcomings (e.g., different timepoints of language introduction within the language section in EPS, task development, comparability of tasks) do not yet allow to assess academic achievement in language subjects. • Considering that the ÉpStan do not currently include a measure that operationalises the learning environment, the present report is unable to draw any conclusions regarding which EPS aspect contributes decisively in explaining the observed differences in educational outcomes. Nevertheless, three potential explanations are presented for further exploration: better linguistic fit in EPS (i.e., students learning to read and write in their native or a related language), structural differences between school offers (e.g., primary and secondary education within one institution, the institutionalized quality assurance and flexibility in teacher recruitment in EPS), and the differences in the composition of the student population (i.e., lower uptake rate of the EPS offer by low SES students and Portuguese speaking students). • The finding that low SES students and Portuguese speaking students take up the EPS offer less frequently than their high SES peers and French or English speaking students, and that the EPS student population differs from the student population in schools following the Luxembourgish curriculum, could potentially result out of three main hurdles: namely (1) the application of selection criteria considering that the demand for EPS is surpassing the number of available places (i.e., the linguistic and/or academic profile of applying students is taken into consideration); (2) lacking system knowledge regarding the characteristics of Luxembourg’s education system among all actors involved in education (which makes it difficult to take informed decisions on a student’s education); and (3) potential organizational challenges that hamper the uptake of the EPS offer (e.g., geographical location of the EPS). • In light of the tentative result that students in EPS show better educational outcomes than many of their peers in schools following the Luxembourgish curriculum, two main implications for educational policy can be deduced. First, the student composition of EPS could be diversified in a targeted manner. This could be achieved, for example, by a) encouraging EPS to target student groups considered as disadvantaged in the context of schooling (e.g., low SES students) more effectively, and by b) fostering an encompassing system knowledge (e.g., characteristics, similarities and differences of the two school offers) among all actors involved in education (e.g., teachers, parents, educational advisors, school psychologists) to allow parents to take an informed decision on their child’s education. A second implication would be to introduce certain characteristics of EPS in schools following the Luxembourgish curriculum (e.g., extending the linguistic offer as in the French literacy acquisition pilot project currently implemented in four C2.1 classes). • By progressively integrating EPS into the well-established Luxembourg School Monitoring Programme, the ÉpStan will allow for a more in-depth analysis of potential educational outcome differences between EPS and schools following the Luxembourgish in the future. With the aim of providing reliable data for evidence-based policy making in the field of education, the results from the ÉpStan could in turn be used for the creation of school offers in which all students can make use of their full academic potential irrespective of their individual background characteristics (e.g., SES, language background)

Registered Replication Report on Fischer, Castel, Dodd, and Pratt (2003)

The attentional spatial-numerical association of response codes (Att-SNARC) effect (Fischer, Castel, Dodd, & Pratt, 2003)—the finding that participants are quicker to detect left-side targets when the targets are preceded by small numbers and quicker to detect right-side targets when they are preceded by large numbers—has been used as evidence for embodied number representations and to support strong claims about the link between number and space (e.g., a mental number line). We attempted to replicate Experiment 2 of Fischer et al. by collecting data from 1,105 participants at 17 labs. Across all 1,105 participants and four interstimulus-interval conditions, the proportion of times the effect we observed was positive (i.e., directionally consistent with the original effect) was .50. Further, the effects we observed both within and across labs were minuscule and incompatible with those observed by Fischer et al. Given this, we conclude that we failed to replicate the effect reported by Fischer et al. In addition, our analysis of several participant-level moderators (finger-counting habits, reading and writing direction, handedness, and mathematics fluency and mathematics anxiety) revealed no substantial moderating effects. Our results indicate that the Att-SNARC effect cannot be used as evidence to support strong claims about the link between number and space

Registered replication report on Fischer, Castel, Dodd, and Pratt (2003)

The attentional spatial-numerical association of response codes (Att-SNARC) effect (Fischer, Castel, Dodd, & Pratt, 2003)—the finding that participants are quicker to detect left-side targets when the targets are preceded by small numbers and quicker to detect right-side targets when they are preceded by large numbers—has been used as evidence for embodied number representations and to support strong claims about the link between number and space (e.g., a mental number line). We attempted to replicate Experiment 2 of Fischer et al. by collecting data from 1,105 participants at 17 labs. Across all 1,105 participants and four interstimulus-interval conditions, the proportion of times the effect we observed was positive (i.e., directionally consistent with the original effect) was .50. Further, the effects we observed both within and across labs were minuscule and incompatible with those observed by Fischer et al. Given this, we conclude that we failed to replicate the effect reported by Fischer et al. In addition, our analysis of several participant-level moderators (finger-counting habits, reading and writing direction, handedness, and mathematics fluency and mathematics anxiety) revealed no substantial moderating effects. Our results indicate that the Att-SNARC effect cannot be used as evidence to support strong claims about the link between number and space

ITER oriented neutronics benchmark experiments on neutron streaming and shutdown dose rate at JET

Neutronics benchmark experiments are conducted at JET in the frame of WPJET3 NEXP within EUROfusion Consortium for validating the neutronics codes and tools used in ITER nuclear analyses to predict quantities such as the neutron flux along streaming paths and dose rates at the shutdown due to activated components. The preparation of neutron streaming and shutdown dose rate experiments for the future Deuterium-Tritium operations (DTE2 campaign) are in progress. This paper summarizes the status of measurements and analyses in progress in the current Deuterium–Deuterium (DD) campaign and the efforts in preparation for DTE2

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis