Debilitamiento de la Política Exterior de la República de China (Taiwán) ante el Protagonismo de la República Popular China y el Establecimiento de Nuevos Aliados Diplomáticos; Repercusiones Económicas y Políticas entre ambas, en una Posible Reunificación. Período 2009-2019

El debilitamiento de la política exterior de la República de China (Taiwán), es el resultado de los diferentes esfuerzos que ha implementado la República Popular China para aislarla en el sistema internacional, a partir del establecimiento de nuevos aliados diplomáticos, pretendiendo con ello convencerla para que acceda al proceso de reunificación con Pekín. En concordancia con lo anterior, los principales hallazgos acaecidos en la presente investigación establecen que en el primer capítulo se vincula la pérdida de aliados diplomáticos de la República de China con el debilitamiento de su política exterior, partiendo de la Resolución 2758 (XXVI) en 1971, emitida por la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas, el cual reconoce a Pekín como el gobierno legítimo de China ante el mismo; por tanto, para Taipéi ha contraído repercusiones considerables de índole político, convirtiéndolo en un Estado no reconocido oficialmente, sin embargo mantiene un posicionamiento económico emergente, que le ha permitido su supervivencia en el escenario internacional. El segundo explica el comportamiento de la República Popular China hacia los aliados diplomáticos de la República de China, para que se alineen al principio de una sola China, a través de la implementación de sus pilares y ejes prioritarios en materia de política exterior; de igual forma, detallar el ascenso e inserción de Pekín al escenario internacional, desde su proclamación. Y el tercero deduce las repercusiones económicas y políticas que tendría la República Popular China y la República de China ante una reunificación entre ambas, mediante la propuesta de dos escenarios posibles para la culminación del proceso integrativo; asimismo, tras la toma de cualquier decisión se promueve una reconfiguración geopolítica en la región asiática

Development of the FAO/INFOODS/IZINCG Global Food Composition Database for Phytate.

Phytate is widely distributed in the plant kingdom, and its significance for human nutrition has been often described. Data on phytate is available in very few composition tables, for a limited number of foods and mainly for raw products. With the aim of publishing the first global repository of analytical data on phytate, data on moisture, phytate, zinc, iron and calcium were compiled. Other aspects, such as the analytical method used, biodiversity and processing, were considered, and phytate: mineral ratios were calculated when possible. From a comprehensive literature search, over 250 references were compiled, generating 3377 entries: 39% for raw and 61% for processed foods. Most of the entries were for cereals (35%), followed by legumes (27%) and vegetables (11%). The most common analytical methods used were indirect precipitation (26%) and anion exchange (25%), while separate determination of IPs is the most recommended. The database can be used as a tool for nutrition workers to include into food composition tables and to develop programmes related to mineral deficiencies. These data will be useful for designing diets with enhanced mineral bioavailability and for improving the estimates for nutrient requirements. The database is available at the INFOODS (www.fao.org/infoods/infoods/tables-and-databases/en) and IZiNCG webpages (www.izincg.org)

Cadastramento e mapa inteligente: divergência entre teoria e prática / Registration and intelligent map: divergence between theory and practice

Territorialização é um dos pressupostos da organização das práticas de saúde. O mapa inteligente mostra a situação atual da comunidade como um todo, por isso é um importante instrumento para melhorar a qualidade do serviço de saúde através de planejamento. No entanto, essa estratégia, muitas vezes, reduz o conceito de espaço, utilizado de uma forma meramente administrativa. Nos causou estranhamento o fato de não ter sido visualizado mapas inteligentes em uma Unidade Básica de Saúde de Itajaí, em roda de conversa com os Agentes Comunitários de Saúde (ACS), foi verificado que o mapa é atualizado apenas uma vez ao ano com o intuito de cumprir obrigações referentes ao PMAQ-AB (Programa Nacional de Melhoria do Acesso e da Qualidade da Atenção Básica). Os ACSs utilizam uma agenda não padronizada para os registros de dados, percebe-se, portanto, que, além do desconhecimento sobre a importância do uso do mapa para ampliação de ações de prevenção e manutenção da saúde, há um déficit na perspectiva da integralidade do território e seus atores sociais, desfavorecendo, consequentemente, a população. Sendo assim, os ACSs deveriam receber um treinamento antes do início de suas atividades com o intuito de elucidar e ressaltar a importância de um mapa inteligente para a melhora da qualidade do serviço da saúde

Serum Retinol Concentrations in Mothers and Newborns at Delivery in a Public Maternity Hospital in Recife, Northeast Brazil

Serum retinol concentrations were compared in a consecutive series of 65 mother-newborn pairs at delivery in a public maternity hospital in Recife, Brazil, from January to August 2008 and examined their association with biological, socioeconomic, environmental and obstetrical characteristics. Serum retinol concentrations of the newborns (umbilical cord) and mothers (brachial venipuncture) were analyzed by highperformance liquid chromatography. Prevalence of low (<0.70 \u3bcmol/L) and inadequate (<1.05 \u3bcmol/L) serum retinol concentrations were observed in 23.1% (95% CI 13.9-35.5) and 23.0% (95% CI 13.5-35.8) among newborns and mothers respectively. The serum retinol distribution was lower in male than female infants (-0.4 \u3bcmol/L, p=0.01) and, across both sexes, concentrations in paired newborn and mother were correlated (r=0.27, p=0.04). Further, maternal status explains only 7% of the variance in retinol concentrations in newborn\u2019s cord plasma. Among mothers delivering in public facilities in Recife, hypovitaminosis may exist

Avaliação de risco cardiometabólico e fatores associados em pessoas idosas diabéticas

To evaluate cardiometabolic risk based on visceral fat indices and associated factors in elderly people with diabetes. Cross-sectional study with an analytical approach, carried out in primary health care. Cardiometabolic risk was estimated from two visceral adiposity indices, the product of lipid accumulation and the visceral adiposity index. Associations were made between cardiometabolic risk and sociodemographic, laboratory and lifestyle variables using the Chi-square test or Fisher's exact test and multivariate analysis using the Poisson model adjusted with robust variance. 202 elderly people with diabetes were evaluated, with a mean age of 67.9 ± 6.7 years. Visceral adiposity indices were related to variables compatible with cardiometabolic risk. Female sex, changes in fasting blood glucose, neck circumference, waist-to-hip ratio and total cholesterol were associated with the visceral adiposity index. While in the lipid accumulation product, the association occurred with an increase in the percentage of fat assessed by body mass index, neck circumference, changes in total cholesterol, fasting blood glucose, glycated hemoglobin and a reduction in HDL. Access to studies was the only sociodemographic variable that was related to the product of lipid accumulation in this population. The lack of association between the studied indices and clinical variables, inflammatory parameters or blood pressure levels suggests that their use as a method of assessing and monitoring cardiometabolic risk should be carried out with caution.Avaliar o risco cardiometabólico a partir dos índices de adiposidade visceral e fatores associados em idosos diabéticos. Estudo transversal com abordagem analítica, realizado na atenção primária de saúde do Recife, Nordeste do Brasil. O risco cardiometabólico foi estimado a partir de dois índices de adiposidade visceral, o produto de acumulação lipídica e o índice de adiposidade visceral. Foram realizadas associações entre o risco cardiometabólico e variáveis sociodemográficas, laboratoriais e de estilo de vida por meio do Teste Qui-quadrado de Independência de Pearson ou Teste Exato de Fisher e análise multivariada pelo modelo de Poisson ajustado com variância robusta. Foram avaliados 202 idosos diabéticos com média de idade de 67,9 ± 6,7 anos. Os índices de adiposidade visceral apresentaram relação com variáveis compatíveis ao risco cardiometabólico. Sexo feminino, alterações na glicemia de jejum, circunferência do pescoço, relação cintura-quadril e colesterol total estiveram associadas ao índice de adiposidade visceral. Enquanto no produto de acumulação lipídica, a associação ocorreu com aumento do percentual de gordura avaliado por índice de massa corporal, circunferência do pescoço, alterações no colesterol total, glicemia de jejum, hemoglobina glicada e com a redução do HDL. O acesso aos estudos foi a única variável sociodemográfica que esteve relacionada ao produto de acumulação lipídica neste público. A ausência de associação dos índices estudados com variáveis clínicas, parâmetros inflamatórios ou com níveis pressóricos, sugere que seu uso como método de avaliação e acompanhamento do risco cardiometabólico seja realizado com cautela

Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) Research in Action: Opportunity Crops for Africa

The Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (or “VACS”) brings together dedicated communities and individuals from research, advocacy, and policy to shine a light on opportunities that opportunity crops provide to build more resilient and food systems. Scaling up production and access to more diverse, climate-resilient crop varieties that support good nutrition and better livelihoods is a goal shared across national, regional, and international communities. VACS has gained important visibility, including from the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, which has galvanized further international support. This report outlines the guiding concepts of the VACS approach, provides an overview of the research conducted as part of VACS through crop-modeling and evidence synthesis approaches, and recommends areas of focus for the movement going forward as well as ways to engage in VACS

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

Mortality and pulmonary complications in patients undergoing surgery with perioperative SARS-CoV-2 infection: an international cohort study

Background: The impact of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) on postoperative recovery needs to be understood to inform clinical decision making during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. This study reports 30-day mortality and pulmonary complication rates in patients with perioperative SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods: This international, multicentre, cohort study at 235 hospitals in 24 countries included all patients undergoing surgery who had SARS-CoV-2 infection confirmed within 7 days before or 30 days after surgery. The primary outcome measure was 30-day postoperative mortality and was assessed in all enrolled patients. The main secondary outcome measure was pulmonary complications, defined as pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, or unexpected postoperative ventilation. Findings: This analysis includes 1128 patients who had surgery between Jan 1 and March 31, 2020, of whom 835 (74·0%) had emergency surgery and 280 (24·8%) had elective surgery. SARS-CoV-2 infection was confirmed preoperatively in 294 (26·1%) patients. 30-day mortality was 23·8% (268 of 1128). Pulmonary complications occurred in 577 (51·2%) of 1128 patients; 30-day mortality in these patients was 38·0% (219 of 577), accounting for 81·7% (219 of 268) of all deaths. In adjusted analyses, 30-day mortality was associated with male sex (odds ratio 1·75 [95% CI 1·28–2·40], p\textless0·0001), age 70 years or older versus younger than 70 years (2·30 [1·65–3·22], p\textless0·0001), American Society of Anesthesiologists grades 3–5 versus grades 1–2 (2·35 [1·57–3·53], p\textless0·0001), malignant versus benign or obstetric diagnosis (1·55 [1·01–2·39], p=0·046), emergency versus elective surgery (1·67 [1·06–2·63], p=0·026), and major versus minor surgery (1·52 [1·01–2·31], p=0·047). Interpretation: Postoperative pulmonary complications occur in half of patients with perioperative SARS-CoV-2 infection and are associated with high mortality. Thresholds for surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic should be higher than during normal practice, particularly in men aged 70 years and older. Consideration should be given for postponing non-urgent procedures and promoting non-operative treatment to delay or avoid the need for surgery. Funding: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland, Bowel and Cancer Research, Bowel Disease Research Foundation, Association of Upper Gastrointestinal Surgeons, British Association of Surgical Oncology, British Gynaecological Cancer Society, European Society of Coloproctology, NIHR Academy, Sarcoma UK, Vascular Society for Great Britain and Ireland, and Yorkshire Cancer Research

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe