Laserska desorpcijsko–ionizacijska masena spektroskopija potpomognuta sa C60

An application of C60-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry of two organic samples including insulin (5734 Da), bovine albumin (66 000 Da) and a heteropoly inorganic system: phosphotungstic acid H3PO4(WO3)12×H2O, is presented. A nitrogen laser (337 nm) on a linear tandem time-of-flight mass spectrometer is used for the observation of the laser-power dependence of mass spectra.Opisuje se primjena laserske desorpcijsko–ionizacijske masene spektroskopije sa dva organska pripravka, insulin (5734 Da) sa crijevnim albuminom (66 000 Da), te heteropolni anorganski sistem od fosforovolframske kiseline, H3PO4(WO3)12×H2O. Primijenjen je dušikov laser pri linearnom tandem masenom spektrometru s mjerenjem vremena proleta i proučavana je ovisnost masenih spektara o snazi laserskog snopa. Pokazano je da se tehnika slojeva sa C60 kao substratom za desorpciju organskih ili neorganskih molekula, može primijeniti kao alternativna dobro poznatoj MALDI metodi

Exploration of Cardiology Patient Hospital Presentations, Health Care Utilisation and Cardiovascular Risk Factors During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Objectives: COVID-19 and the lockdowns have affected health care provision internationally, including medical procedures and methods of consultation. We aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 at two Australian hospitals, focussing on cardiovascular hospital admissions, the use of community resources and cardiovascular risk factor control through a mixed methods approach. Methods: Admissions data from the quaternary referral hospital were analysed, and 299 patients were interviewed from July 2020 to December 2021. With the admissions data, the number, complexity and mortality of cardiology hospital admissions, prior to the first COVID-19 lockdown (T0=February 2018–July 2019) were compared to after the introduction of COVID-19 lockdowns (T1=February 2020–July 2021). During interviews, we asked patients about hospital and community health resource use, and their control of cardiovascular risk factors from the first lockdown. Results: Admission data showed a reduction in hospital presentations (T0=138,099 vs T1=128,030) and cardiology admissions after the lockdown period began (T0=4,951 vs T1=4,390). After the COVID-19-related lockdowns began, there was an increased complexity of cardiology admissions (T0=18.7%, 95% CI 17.7%–19.9% vs T1=20.3%, 95% CI 19.1%–21.5%, chi-square test: 4,158.658, p<0.001) and in-hospital mortality (T0=2.3% of total cardiology admissions 95% CI 1.9%–2.8% vs T1=2.8%, 95% CI 2.3%–3.3%, chi-square test: 4,060.217, p<0.001). In addition, 27% of patients delayed presentation due to fears of COVID-19 while several patients reported reducing their general practitioner or pathology/imaging appointments (27% and 11% respectively). Overall, 19% reported more difficulty accessing medical care during the lockdown periods. Patients described changes in their cardiovascular risk factors, including 25% reporting reductions in physical activity. Conclusion: We found a decrease in hospital presentations but with increased complexity after the introduction of COVID-19 lockdowns. Patients reported being fearful about presenting to hospital and experiencing difficulty in accessing community health services

A Method for Serial Tissue Processing and Parallel Analysis of Aberrant Crypt Morphology, Mucin Depletion, and Beta-Catenin Staining in an Experimental Model of Colon Carcinogenesis

The use of architectural and morphological characteristics of cells for establishing prognostic indicators by which individual pathologies are assigned grade and stage is a well-accepted practice. Advances in automated micro- and macroscopic image acquisition and digital image analysis have created new opportunities in the field of prognostic assessment; but, one area in experimental pathology, animal models for colon cancer, has not taken advantage of these opportunities. This situation is primarily due to the methods available to evaluate the colon of the rodent for the presence of premalignant and malignant pathologies. We report a new method for the excision and processing of the entire colon of the rat and illustrate how this procedure permitted the quantitative assessment of aberrant crypt foci (ACF), a premalignant colon pathology, for characteristics consistent with progression to malignancy. ACF were detected by methylene blue staining and subjected to quantitative morphometric analysis. Colons were then restained with high iron diamine–alcian blue for assessment of mucin depletion using an image overlay to associate morphometric data with mucin depletion. The subsequent evaluation of ACF for beta-catenin staining is also demonstrated. The methods described are particularly relevant to the screening of compounds for cancer chemopreventive activity

Education and articulation: Laclau and Mouffe’s radical democracy in school

This paper outlines a theory of radical democratic education by addressing a key concept in Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: articulation. Through their concept of articulation, Laclau and Mouffe attempt to liberate Gramsci’s theory of hegemony from Marxist economism, and adapt it to a political sphere inhabited by a plurality of struggles and agents none of which is predominant. However, while for Gramsci the political process of hegemony formation has an explicit educational dimension, Laclau and Mouffe ignore this dimension altogether. My discussion starts with elaborating the concept of articulation and analysing it in terms of three dimensions: performance, connection and transformation. I then address the role of education in Gramsci’s politics, in which the figure of the intellectual is central, and argue that radical democratic education requires renouncing that figure. In the final section, I offer a theory of such education, in which both teacher and students articulate their political differences and identities

Agricultural and food security impacts from the 2010 Russia flash drought

The flash drought and its associated heat wave that affected western Russia in the summer of 2010 had significant cascading agricultural and socioeconomic impacts. Drought indicators sensitive to soil moisture and evapotranspiration (ET) showed that the flash drought began in June 2010, then intensified rapidly and expanded to cover much of western Russia. By early July, almost all of the major wheat producing regions of Russia were experiencing extreme water stress to the winter and spring wheat crops. The timing of the onset of the flash drought was particularly devastating as the period of most rapid intensification overlapped with the flowering stage for both the winter and spring wheat crops. As a result, wheat yields in Russia were reduced by over 70 percent in top wheat producing oblasts and total wheat production was reduced by 20 million metric tons (MT) compared to the previous seasons. In fulfillment of its recently adopted Food Security Doctrine, the Russian government banned the export of wheat in early August 2010 to preserve wheat for its own consumption. Further compounding matters on a global scale, the significant reduction in wheat production in Russia coincided with wheat production issues in places like western Australia, which led to a large drop in global wheat stocks. The sharp drop in global wheat stocks coincided with a rapid increase in wheat prices across the globe. The rapid increase in wheat prices, partly resulting from the rapid intensification of drought in Russia, led to increased prices for wheat flour and bread in many countries throughout the world. This ultimately led to an increase in poverty and civil unrest in countries like Mozambique and Egypt with a history of inequality and poverty

Turning collegial governance on its head : symbolic violence, hegemony and the academic board

This article draws on Bourdieu&rsquo;s theorisation of domination and Gramsci&rsquo;s notions of hegemony within the context of a larger empirical study of Australian university academic governance, and of academic boards (also known as academic senates or faculty senates) in particular. Reporting data that suggest a continued but radically altered form of collegial governance in which hegemony is exercised by management rather than by the professor, it theorises the domination of academic boards within western democratic universities. However, traditional collegial governance is also dependent upon a community of scholars, a role historically played by the academic board. In view of the suggested transition in collegial governance and the resultant convergence of academic work and management, the article concludes with questions about whether academic boards can continue to serve as communities of scholars in future

Creating the cultures of the future: cultural strategy, policy and institutions in Gramsci. Part one: Gramsci and cultural policy studies: some methodological reflections

Gramsci’s writings have rarely been discussed and used systematically by scholars in cultural policy studies, despite the fact that in cultural studies, from which the field emerged, Gramsci has been a major source of theoretical concepts. Cultural policy studies were, in fact, theorised as an anti-Gramscian project between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when a group of scholars based in Australia advocated a major political and theoretical reorientation of cultural studies away from hegemony theory and radical politicisation, and towards reformist-technocratic engagement with the policy concerns of contemporary government and business. Their criticism of the ‘Gramscian tradition’ as inadequate for the study of cultural policy and institutions has remained largely unexamined in any detail for almost twenty years and seems to have had a significant role in the subsequent neglect of Gramsci’s contribution in this area of study. This essay, consisting of three parts, is an attempt to challenge such criticism and to provide an analysis of Gramsci’s writings, with the aim of proposing a more systematic contribution of his work to the theoretical development of cultural policy studies. In Part One, I question the use of the notion of ‘Gramscian tradition’ made by its critics and challenge the claim that it was inadequate for the study of cultural policy and institutions. In parts Two and Three, I consider Gramsci’s specific writings on questions of cultural strategy, policy and institutions, which have so far been overlooked by scholars, arguing that they provide further analytical insights to those offered by his more general concepts. More specifically, in Part Two, I consider Gramsci’s pre-prison writings and political practice in relation to questions of cultural strategy and institutions. I argue that the analysis of these early texts, which were written in the years in which Gramsci was active in party organisation and leadership, is fundamental not only for understanding the nature of Gramsci’s early and continued involvement with questions of cultural strategy and institutions, but also as a key for deciphering and interpreting cultural policy themes that he later developed in the prison notebooks, and which originated in earlier debates. Finally, in Part Three, I carry out a detailed analysis of Gramsci’s prison notes on questions of cultural strategy, policy and institutions, which enrich the theoretical underpinnings for critical frameworks of analysis as well as for radical practices of cultural strategy, cultural policy-making and cultural organisation. I then answer the question of whether Gramsci’s insights amount to a theory of cultural policy

A classification prognostic score to predict OS in stage IV well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumors

No validated prognostic tool is available for predicting overall survival (OS) of patients with well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumors (WDNETs). This study, conducted in three independent cohorts of patients from five different European countries, aimed to develop and validate a classification prognostic score for OS in patients with stage IV WDNETs. We retrospectively collected data on 1387 patients: (i) patients treated at the Istituto Nazionale Tumori (Milan, Italy; n = 515); (ii) European cohort of rare NET patients included in the European RARECAREnet database (n = 457); (iii) Italian multicentric cohort of pancreatic NET (pNETs) patients treated at 24 Italian institutions (n = 415). The score was developed using data from patients included in cohort (i) (training set); external validation was performed by applying the score to the data of the two independent cohorts (ii) and (iii) evaluating both calibration and discriminative ability (Harrell C statistic). We used data on age, primary tumor site, metastasis (synchronous vs metachronous), Ki-67, functional status and primary surgery to build the score, which was developed for classifying patients into three groups with differential 10-year OS: (I) favorable risk group: 10-year OS &gt;= 70%; (II) intermediate risk group: 30% &lt;= 10-year OS &lt; 70%; (III) poor risk group: 10-year OS &lt; 30%. The Harrell C statistic was 0.661 in the training set, and 0.626 and 0.601 in the RARECAREnet and Italian multicentric validation sets, respectively. In conclusion, based on the analysis of three 'field-practice' cohorts collected in different settings, we defined and validated a prognostic score to classify patients into three groups with different long-term prognoses

Revolutions from above: worker training as trasformismo in South Korea

While making very substantial changes to the population's working conditions, government strategies to foster economic development in South Korea have historically attempted to keep worker involvement, in terms of influence on the process, to a bare minimum. Applying the Gramscian concept of passive revolution, this article analyses governance mechanisms and production relations over a history of authoritarianism and up to the contemporary period of democratic reform. Trasformismo, which is a strategy of limited concessions, has been provided via vocational training for workers. Despite this attempt at inclusion, it is concluded that workers have not enjoyed full participation in negotiation for their welfare at any time in Korean history