Friedenssicherung durch Minderheitenschutz : Instrumente und Mechanismen der Vereinten Nationen

Ziel des vorliegenden Papers ist die Bewertung der Instrumente und Mechanismen der Vereinten Nationen zum Minderheitenschutz. Das friedliche Zusammenleben von Mehrheiten und Minderheiten innerhalb der Bevölkerung kann, so wird gezeigt, nur durch eine substanzielle Zusammenarbeit der internationalen Staatengemeinschaft erreicht werden. Auf Basis einer Analyse historischer Entwicklungen und mittels exemplarischer Untersuchungen dreier zentraler Minderheitenschutzinstrumente aus dem System der VN wird die Wirksamkeit der Menschenrechtsinstrumente bzw. Mechanismen auf theoretischer sowie legaler Ebene bewertet. Durch eine kritische Bewertung ihrer praktischen Umsetzung werden außerdem Alternativen zum existierenden internationalen Minderheitenschutzsystem aufgezeigt

Free Riding Rio: Protest, Public Transport and the Politics of a Footboard

This article explores the political quality of relations between residents and urban materiality. Against a background of mass protests against transit fare increases in major Brazilian cities, and the violent infrastructural transformations of post‐Olympic Rio de Janeiro, I show how the four‐year suspension of a central city tramline has led to the emergence of new forms of urban collectivity. My case study concentrates on the tramway’s function as “free riding” device, which allows residents to jump on and off the footboard without having to pay for the journey. I draw on filmed accounts of footboard‐riding to examine how embodied relations to urban matter have induced claims for alternative ways of organizing public transport and access to the city. By combining approaches to assemblage, micropolitics and affect, I argue that residents’ attachments to the tramway and its latest technological changes generate ambiguous political mobilizations, ranging from revolutionary to reactionary.TU Berlin, Open-Access-Mittel – 202

Bonding oder „Was hält die Stadt zusammen?“

„Infrastrukturen städtischer Intimität“ – flüchtige, affektive Prozesse des Sich-Verbindens, vermittelt durch konkrete, mit Versprechen, Wünschen und Begehren behaftete Objekte – halten die Stadt zusammen. Gleichzeitig werden Prozesse der Fragmentierung, De-Mobilisierung, Ent-Politisierung häufig auf ebendiese intimen Verbindungsweisen zurückgeführt. In meinem Beitrag gehe ich dem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Zusammenhalt und Auseinanderbrechen, zwischen neuen Verbindungen und regressiven, beharrenden Dynamiken urbaner Kollektive nach. Erstens zeige ich am Beispiel „öffentlicher Verkehr“, wie Intimität, Verletzlichkeit und exposure als raumproduzierende Taktiken eingesetzt werden, die heteronormative Allianzen und Ordnungen aufbrechen. Zweitens argumentiere ich mit einer Anekdote zu den kreativen Baugruben-Protesten im prä-olympischen Rio de Janeiro, dass gerade das Spiel mit der Intensität „loser Verbindungen“ es ermöglicht, die fragile Balance kollektiven Lebens in urbanen Gesellschaften zusammenzuhalten

Spaces of exposure: Re-thinking ‘publicness’ through public transport

Developing thoughts on exposure in cultural geography, literary studies, and mobilities research, this article aims to provide a more comprehensive account towards the publicness of public space. What would happen if we assessed publicness not by degrees of openness and inclusion, but through the nexus of vulnerability and complicity that is fundamental to the notion of exposure? To grasp such an intrinsic dualism, our perspective goes towards public transport, where experiences of exposure are intensified by its specific conditions of encapsulation and movement. We illustrate this perspective drawing from the autobiographical chronicles of the Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel, in order to then propose a ‘learning from’ the case of public transport for a rethinking of publicness. Specifically, we argue that exposure provides new insights on agency, power and vulnerability as part of a more processual notion of public space.Peer Reviewe

Effect of Pembrolizumab Plus Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy on Pathologic Complete Response in Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer: An Analysis of the Ongoing Phase 2 Adaptively Randomized I-SPY2 Trial.

Importance: Approximately 25% of patients with early-stage breast cancer who receive (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy experience a recurrence within 5 years. Improvements in therapy are greatly needed. Objective: To determine if pembrolizumab plus neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) in early-stage breast cancer is likely to be successful in a 300-patient, confirmatory randomized phase 3 neoadjuvant clinical trial. Design, Setting, and Participants: The I-SPY2 study is an ongoing open-label, multicenter, adaptively randomized phase 2 platform trial for high-risk, stage II/III breast cancer, evaluating multiple investigational arms in parallel. Standard NACT serves as the common control arm; investigational agent(s) are added to this backbone. Patients with ERBB2 (formerly HER2)-negative breast cancer were eligible for randomization to pembrolizumab between November 2015 and November 2016. Interventions: Participants were randomized to receive taxane- and anthracycline-based NACT with or without pembrolizumab, followed by definitive surgery. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary end point was pathologic complete response (pCR). Secondary end points were residual cancer burden (RCB) and 3-year event-free and distant recurrence-free survival. Investigational arms graduated when demonstrating an 85% predictive probability of success in a hypothetical confirmatory phase 3 trial. Results: Of the 250 women included in the final analysis, 181 were randomized to the standard NACT control group (median [range] age, 47 [24.77] years). Sixty-nine women (median [range] age, 50 [27-71] years) were randomized to 4 cycles of pembrolizumab in combination with weekly paclitaxel followed by AC; 40 hormone receptor (HR)-positive and 29 triple-negative. Pembrolizumab graduated in all 3 biomarker signatures studied. Final estimated pCR rates, evaluated in March 2017, were 44% vs 17%, 30% vs 13%, and 60% vs 22% for pembrolizumab vs control in the ERBB2-negative, HR-positive/ERBB2-negative, and triple-negative cohorts, respectively. Pembrolizumab shifted the RCB distribution to a lower disease burden for each cohort evaluated. Adverse events included immune-related endocrinopathies, notably thyroid abnormalities (13.0%) and adrenal insufficiency (8.7%). Achieving a pCR appeared predictive of long-term outcome, where patients with pCR following pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy had high event-free survival rates (93% at 3 years with 2.8 years\u27 median follow-up). Conclusions and Relevance: When added to standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy, pembrolizumab more than doubled the estimated pCR rates for both HR-positive/ERBB2-negative and triple-negative breast cancer, indicating that checkpoint blockade in women with early-stage, high-risk, ERBB2-negative breast cancer is highly likely to succeed in a phase 3 trial. Pembrolizumab was the first of 10 agents to graduate in the HR-positive/ERBB2-negative signature. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01042379

Global, regional, and national levels and trends in burden of oral conditions from 1990 to 2017 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease 2017 Study

Government and nongovernmental organizations need national and global estimates on the descriptive epidemiology of common oral conditions for policy planning and evaluation. The aim of this component of the Global Burden of Disease study was to produce estimates on prevalence, incidence, and years lived with disability for oral conditions from 1990 to 2017 by sex, age, and countries. In addition, this study reports the global socioeconomic pattern in burden of oral conditions by the standard World Bank classification of economies as well as the Global Burden of Disease Socio-demographic Index. The findings show that oral conditions remain a substantial population health challenge. Globally, there were 3.5 billion cases (95% uncertainty interval [95% UI], 3.2 to 3.7 billion) of oral conditions, of which 2.3 billion (95% UI, 2.1 to 2.5 billion) had untreated caries in permanent teeth, 796 million (95% UI, 671 to 930 million) had severe periodontitis, 532 million (95% UI, 443 to 622 million) had untreated caries in deciduous teeth, 267 million (95% UI, 235 to 300 million) had total tooth loss, and 139 million (95% UI, 133 to 146 million) had other oral conditions in 2017. Several patterns emerged when the World Bank’s classification of economies and the Socio-demographic Index were used as indicators of economic development. In general, more economically developed countries have the lowest burden of untreated dental caries and severe periodontitis and the highest burden of total tooth loss. The findings offer an opportunity for policy makers to identify successful oral health strategies and strengthen them; introduce and monitor different approaches where oral diseases are increasing; plan integration of oral health in the agenda for prevention of noncommunicable diseases; and estimate the cost of providing universal coverage for dental care