The energy policy of Poland until 2040 and protection of the environment against low emissions – selected issues

The article is an attempt at depicting the intertwining of energy policy with the fight against low emissions and answers the question of whether this document can have a real impact on air protection in Poland. The author addresses the definitions of such terms as air protection and low emissions, and briefly outlines the key and most important – from the perspective of the topic of this article – objectives of the draft energy policy of Poland until 20401 (further: EPP2040). The article concludes with a discussion of the PEP2040 objectives in the context of the fight against low emissions and an attempt at evaluation of the adopted solutions

Trastuzumab as adjuvant treatment for early stage HER2-positive breast cancer — a 10 year history

Overexpression of the receptor for human epidermal growth factor type 2 (HER2), or gene amplification for this receptor is observed in approx. 20–25% of breast cancer patients and is associated with a more aggressive course, a higher risk of recurrence and shorter survival. Trastuzumab, a monoclonal antibody, directed to the extracellular domain of the HER2 receptor, was introduced for the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer in 1998, and its use has caused equal opportunities for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer and those with HER2-negative. In adjuvant treatment of early breast cancer the risk of recurrence is decreased and overall survival is prolonged. The results of international randomised studies, published more than 10 years ago, despite some controversies concerning optimal regimen and duration of treatment, almost immediately became the basis for a change in the standard of care. Currently we know that the optimal administration of trastuzumab is concurrent with taxane-based chemotherapy, but it should not be added to anthracyclines. Long-term observation of the patient population treated in these trials has shown that the introduction of trastuzumab to clinical practice has changed the natural history of HER2-positive early breast cancer. The benefit from this treatment lasts for many years

Building semantic user profile for Polish web news portal

We present our research at Onet, the largest Polish news portal, aimed at constructing meaningful user profiles that are most descriptive of their interests in the context of the media content they browse. We used two distinct state-of-the-art numerical text-representation techniques: LDA topic modeling and Word2Vec word embeddings. We trained our models on the corpora of articles in Polish and compare them with a baseline model built on a general language corpora.We compared the performance of algorithms on two distinct tasks - similar articles retrieval and users gender classification. Our results show that the choice of text representation depends on the task - Word2Vec is more suitable for text comparison, especially for short texts such as titles. In the user profiling task, the best performance was obtained with a combination of features: topics from the article text and word embeddings from the title

Electrochemical Sensors for Detections of Influenza Viruses: Fundamentals and Applications

Avian influenza viruses (AIVs) could cause severe diseases and, as the consequence, serious economic losses as well as a risk for potential transmission to humans. Therefore, the detection of viruses and their fragments or specific DNA sequences becomes an important approach in molecular diagnosis. Here, we present electrochemical genosensors devoted for detection of influenza virus H5N1 gene sequence. We focus our attention on ion-channel mechanism, E-DNA sensors, and genosensors based on redox-active layer. The novel dual DNA electrochemical sensor with “signal-off” and “signal-on” architecture for simultaneous detection of two different sequences of DNA derived from avian influenza virus type H5N1 by means of one electrode is presented. Immunosensors are also adequate analytical devices for detection of pathogens since antibodies are natural receptors responsible for binding of antigens. Thus, the binding selectivity and efficiency are naturally high. The immunosensors presented could be divided into two main groups: ion-channel mimetic and based on redox-active monolayer

Should oncologists be responsible for monitoring post-treatment follow-up in cancer patients?

With increasing cancer rates, a steady rise is also observed in the numbers of such patients being followed-up after their treatment. This aspect of healthcare embraces cancer patients recovering from radical treatment, post-palliative treatment and frequently those patients who have exhausted the possibilities of specialist treatment. Controversies are ever ongoing about who should be responsible for monitoring post-treatment follow-up. Bearing in mind the limited numbers of specialists in clinical oncology, radiotherapy and cancer surgery, relative to GP specialists, the roles of GPs should be more boldly and clearly defined regarding the delivery of healthcare to cancer patients. Developing proficient ‘healthcare models’ based on collaboration between oncologists and GPs is thereby required. This article presents the arguments for justifying such a solution

Breast cancer in young women

Breast cancer (BC) in young women is rare, affecting only 4–6% of women under the age of 40. Regardless, BC remains the most common malignancy among younger patients. Recently, a significant increase in BC rates has been observed among pre-menopausal subjects. Breast cancer in young women requires special attention due to its specific morphologic and prognostic characteristics and unique aspects, including fertility preservation and psychosocial issues (e.g. its impact on family life and career). Young women are more likely to have tumors with higher incidence of negative clinicopathologic features (higher histological grade, more lymph node positivity, lower estrogen receptor (ER) positivity, higher rates of Her2/neu overexpression). Also, they tend to be diagnosed at more advanced stages of the disease. That, in turn, contributes to less favorable prognosis as compared to older women. Young women are generally treated similarly to older patients. Surgical management includes mastectomy or breast-conserving surgery, followed by radiation therapy (younger women have higher local recurrence rates than older women, especially after breast-conserving therapy). Although the basics of chemotherapy are the same for patients of all ages, younger women have some special considerations. It is important to consider options for fertility preservation before starting systemic treatment. Patients should have access to genetic testing as their results may affect the choice of therapy. Younger women and their families should receive adequate psychological support and counselling

The implementation of the Paris agreement in Poland. Theory and practice

The main aim of this paper is to describe the legal instruments of climate protection in Poland. This issue is significant, because for several decades, climate changes and climate protection have been the object of legal regulation, both international, European and domestic. The conducted analysis concerns two main legal acts: the Act of 9 June 2011 – the Geological and Mining Law as regards CCS, and the Act of 20 February 2015 on Renewable energy (including, to a certain extent, regulations of the Act of 20 May 2016 on Investments in wind power plants) as well as other provisions relating to environmental protection. The paper closes with an evaluation of the present regulations and formulation of de lege ferenda proposals

Incorporating human dimension in autonomous decision-making on moral and ethical issues

As autonomous systems are becoming more and more pervasive, they often have to make decisions concerning moral and ethical values. There are many approaches to incorporating moral values in autonomous decision-making that are based on some sort of logical deduction. However, we argue here, in order for decision-making to seem persuasive to humans, it needs to reflect human values and judgments. Employing some insights from our ongoing research using features of the blackboard architecture for a context-aware recommender system, and a legal decision-making system that incorporates supra-legal aspects, we aim to exploreif this architecture can also be adapted to implement a moral decision-making system that generates rationales that are persuasive to humans. Our vision is that such a system can be used as an advisory system to consider a situation from different moral pers pectives, and generate ethical pros and cons of taking a particular course of action in a given context

Metal-promoted synthesis and characterization of Pr(III), Nd(III) and Eu(III) Schiff base complexes derived from salicylaldehyde and 4,9-dioxa-1,12- diaminododecane

The one-step metal template reaction of salicylaldehyde with 4,9-dioxa-1,12-diaminododecane in the presence of praseodymium(III), neodymium(III) or europium(III) nitrates gives complexes containing N,N’- bis(salicylidene)-1,12-diamino-4.9-dioxadodecane ligand with N2O4 set of donor atoms as a result of the [2+1] Schiff base condensation. The template reaction products were characterized by spectroscopic (IR, UV-Vis, ESI-MS) and analytical (elemental and thermogravimetric analysis) methods. All data indicate 1:1 ligand to metal stoichiometry