Oficinas de facilitação gráfica como ferramenta de empoderamento para o protagonismo da juventude agroecológica.

A juventude rural do movimento agroecológico baiano está inseridas no contexto de grave pressão do agronegócio, do sistema capitalista, das formas abusivas de rompimento da cultura e da grilagem de terras. Muitos são os desafios ao se pensar em meios de integrar a juventude em atividades que sejam prazerosas e inspiradoras para ambas as partes da comunidade. A contribuição desta experiência foi proporcionar meios comunicativos para o protagonismo da juventude agroecológica do campo, na área da Educomunicação com foco na linguagem da facilitação gráfica por meio do resgate da identidade e ancestralidade de cada participante. Como também contribuir para o diálogo entre os mais velhos e os jovens das comunidades. Com base nas metodologias participativas, na pedagogia-griô e dinâmicas dos movimentos sociais, esta atividade foi intensa e integrativa para a juventude e atores das comunidades. Criação de símbolos, painéis de anúncios e denúncias, empoderamento da linguagem da facilitação gráfica, foram revelados pelo protagonismo da juventude e agentes das comunidades ao final das oficinas.Edição dos Anais do XI Congresso Brasileiro de Agroecologia, São Cristóvão, Sergipe, 2020

Changes in plasma biomarkers following treatment with cabozantinib in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer: a post hoc analysis of an extension cohort of a phase II trial

BACKGROUND: Cabozantinib is an orally available inhibitor of tyrosine kinases including VEGFR2 and c-MET. We performed a post hoc analysis to find associations between select plasma biomarkers and treatment response in patients (pts) with metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) who received cabozantinib 100 mg daily as part of a phase 2 non-randomized expansion cohort (NCT00940225). METHODS: Plasma samples were collected at baseline, 6 weeks and at time of maximal response from 81 mCRPC pts with bone metastases, of which 33 also had measurable soft-tissue disease. Levels of 27 biomarkers were measured in duplicate using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated for the association between biomarker levels or their change on treatment and either bone scan response (BSR) or soft tissue response according to RECIST. RESULTS: A BSR and RECIST response were seen in 66/81 pts (81 %) and 6/33 pts (18 %) respectively. No significant associations were found between any biomarker at any time point and either type of response. Plasma concentrations of VEGFA, FLT3L, c-MET, AXL, Gas6A, bone-specific alkaline phosphatase, interleukin-8 and the hypoxia markers CA9 and clusterin significantly increased during treatment with cabozantinib irrespective of response. The plasma concentrations of VEGFR2, Trap5b, Angiopoietin-2, TIMP-2 and TIE-2 significantly decreased during treatment with caboznatinib. CONCLUSIONS: Our data did not reveal plasma biomarkers associated with response to cabozantinib. The observed alterations in several biomarkers during treatment with cabozantinib may provide insights on the effects of cabozantinib on tumor cells and on tumor micro-environment and may help point to potential co-targeting approaches

Model-free adaptive filter to mitigate actuator wear

The present article introduces an adaptive filter of statistical basis developed for closed-loop control applications, whose goal is to reduce actuator wear while ensuring a similar control performance regarding the original closed-loop system. The main idea is to avoid the rapid change of the filtered signal when the system output has a derivative not statistically significant regarding the expected measurement noise. The adaptation law of the time constant of the filter is model-free, and the only required information is the variance of the additive noise that the measurements are subjected to. The performance of the proposed adaptive method is illustrated through a combined numerical and experimental study, in addition to its application in an operational oil plant. The results indicate that our formulation holds promise for extending the life of actuators and is easy to implement in most programmable logic controllers