Inequalities in mortality of men by oral and pharyngeal cancer in Barcelona, Spain and São Paulo, Brazil, 1995–2003

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Large inequalities of mortality by most cancers in general, by mouth and pharynx cancer in particular, have been associated to behaviour and geopolitical factors. The assessment of socioeconomic covariates of cancer mortality may be relevant to a full comprehension of distal determinants of the disease, and to appraise opportune interventions. The objective of this study was to compare socioeconomic inequalities in male mortality by oral and pharyngeal cancer in two major cities of Europe and South America.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The official system of information on mortality provided data on deaths in each city; general censuses informed population data. Age-adjusted death rates by oral and pharyngeal cancer for men were independently assessed for neighbourhoods of Barcelona, Spain, and São Paulo, Brazil, from 1995 to 2003. Uniform methodological criteria instructed the comparative assessment of magnitude, trends and spatial distribution of mortality. General linear models assessed ecologic correlations between death rates and socioeconomic indices (unemployment, schooling levels and the human development index) at the inner-city area level. Results obtained for each city were subsequently compared.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Mortality of men by oral and pharyngeal cancer ranked higher in Barcelona (9.45 yearly deaths per 100,000 male inhabitants) than in Spain and Europe as a whole; rates were on decrease. São Paulo presented a poorer profile, with higher magnitude (11.86) and stationary trend. The appraisal of ecologic correlations indicated an unequal and inequitably distributed burden of disease in both cities, with poorer areas tending to present higher mortality. Barcelona had a larger gradient of mortality than São Paulo, indicating a higher inequality of cancer deaths across its neighbourhoods.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The quantitative monitoring of inequalities in health may contribute to the formulation of redistributive policies aimed at the concurrent promotion of wellbeing and social justice. The assessment of groups experiencing a higher burden of disease can instruct health services to provide additional resources for expanding preventive actions and facilities aimed at early diagnosis, standardized treatments and rehabilitation.</p

Micromechanical Properties of Injection-Molded Starch–Wood Particle Composites

The micromechanical properties of injection molded starch–wood particle composites were investigated as a function of particle content and humidity conditions. The composite materials were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction methods. The microhardness of the composites was shown to increase notably with the concentration of the wood particles. In addition,creep behavior under the indenter and temperature dependence were evaluated in terms of the independent contribution of the starch matrix and the wood microparticles to the hardness value. The influence of drying time on the density and weight uptake of the injection-molded composites was highlighted. The results revealed the role of the mechanism of water evaporation, showing that the dependence of water uptake and temperature was greater for the starch–wood composites than for the pure starch sample. Experiments performed during the drying process at 70°C indicated that the wood in the starch composites did not prevent water loss from the samples.Peer reviewe

Brazilian Cerrado natural vegetation dataset

This dataset is composed of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data of several areas of the Brazilian Cerrado for the development of supervised deep learning algorithms on SAR-optical data fusion. The reference data created was built based on the TerraClass Cerrado 2018 map of the same area and the vegetation map produced by Bendini, Hugo N; Fonseca, Leila Maria Garcia; Schwieder, Marcel; Rufin, Philippe; Körting, Thales Sehn; Koumrouyan, Adriana; Hostert, Patrick (2020): Combining environmental and landsat analysis ready data for vegetation mapping: a case study in the Brazilian Savanna biome. The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLIII-B3-2020, 953-960, https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIII-B3-2020-953-2020. It is composed of 15002 training patches, 4000 validation patches, both of size 384x384, and 10 testing images of aprox. 100x100 square km. The Sentinel-2 data is identified by the S2 prefix, and is composed of the 10m and 20m bands of the original Sentinel-2 image. The Sentinel-1 data is identified as S1 and it has 7 bands in a 10m resolution-cell, consisting of the intensities in both polarizations (VV and VH), the real and imaginary part of the off-diagonal of the coherence matrix, and the 3 elements of the H-alpha dual-pol decomposition. The reference data is presented in two ways: one at 10m, which is identified by the GT prefix, and another at 30m, which is identified by the prefix MN. The 30m reference comes from the original reference maps the dataset was based on, since they were produced by Landsat images