Venezuela: A Uniquely Senian Insight into a Human Rights Crisis

For over twenty decades, Venezuelan political leaders have blatantly disregarded their citizens’ human rights, leading to the downfall of Venezuela’s economy and democratic institutions, including severe food and medicine shortages, as well as staggering inflation rates. As a result, Venezuela provides a unique affirmation of the Capabilities Approach introduced by Professor Amartya Sen, which focuses not only on the freedoms that individuals possess, but also on what individuals are capable of doing as possessors of these freedoms. This Note seeks to use Sen’s Capabilities Approach to understand the nature and scope of Venezuela’s multidimensional crisis, arguing that a Senian approach provides a unique perspective into the complexity and deeply intertwined and mutually reinforcing dimensions of this crisis. This Note proposes that each citizen should be represented individually and that there must be an understanding that political freedoms and rights, as described by the Capabilities Approach, are inherently intertwined with the process of development. Finally, when it comes to evaluating rights, the focus should be on what an individual is able to do and be rather than defining these as to how many rights individuals may have under a constitution

Short to long-range charge-transfer excitations in the zincbacteriochlorin-bacteriochlorin complex: a Bethe-Salpeter study

We study using the Bethe-Salpeter formalism the excitation energies of the zincbacteriochlorinbacteriochlorin dyad, a paradigmatic photosynthetic complex. In great contrast with standard timedependent density functional theory calculations with (semi)local kernels, charge transfer excitations are correctly located above the intramolecular Q-bands transitions found to be in excellent agreement with experiment. Further, the asymptotic Coulomb behavior towards the true quasiparticle gap for charge transfer excitations at long distance is correctly reproduced, showing that the present scheme allows to study with the same accuracy intramolecular and charge transfer excitations at various spatial range and screening environment without any adjustable parameter.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

REACTIVITY OF CHLOROPHYLL a/b-PROTEINS AND MICELLAR TRITON X-100 COMPLEXES OF CHLOROPHYLLS a OR b WITH BOROHYDRIDE

The reaction of several plant chlorophyll-protein complexes with NaBH4 has been studied by absorption spectroscopy. In all the complexes studied, chlorophyll b is more reactive than Chi a, due to preferential reaction of its formyl substituent at C-7. The complexes also show large variations in reactivity towards NaBH4 and the order of reactivity is: LHCI > PSII complex > LHCII > PSI > P700 (investigated as a component of PSI). Differential pools of the same type of chlorophyll have been observed in several complexes. Parallel work was undertaken on the reactivity of micellar complexes of chlorophyll a and of chlorophyll b with NaBH4 to study the effect of aggregation state on this reactivity. In these complexes, both chlorophyll a and b show large variations in reactivity in the order monomer > oligomer > polymer with chlorophyll b generally being more reactive than chlorophyll a. It is concluded that aggregation decreases the reactivity of chlorophylls towards NaBH4 in vitro, and may similarly decrease reactivity in naturally-occurring chlorophyll-protein complexes

Femtosecond energy transfer between chromophores in allophycocyanin trimers

Ultrafast energy-transfer processes in allophycocyanin (APC) trimers from Mastigocladus laminosus have been examined by a femtosecond absorption technique. Isotropic absorption recovery kinetics with τ=440±30 fs were observed in APC trimers at 615 nm. In APC monomers such a fast process was not observed. The anisotropy in both samples was constant and close to 0.4 during the first few picoseconds. The results are consistent with a model of the APC trimer in which the two APC chromophores have different absorption spectra with maxima about 600 and 650 nm. The transfer of energy from the 600 nm chromophore to the 650 nm chromophore occurs in 440 fs and is dominated by the Förster dipole—dipole energy-transfer mechanism

Incidental findings of mass lesions on neuroimages in children

Increasing use of neuroimaging in children has led to more incidental findings of CNS mass lesions, the management of which is uncertain. The authors' aims in this study are to describe these mass lesions and their evolution, as well as to discuss the management options and determine the prevalence of incidental CNS mass lesions at their pediatric clinic. A retrospective study was undertaken in children with primary CNS tumors who were younger than 18 years old and were admitted to the University Children's Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland, between January 1995 and December 2010. In 19 (5.7%) of 335 patients with newly diagnosed CNS tumors, the diagnosis of a CNS mass lesion was an incidental finding. Reasons for obtaining neuroimages in these 19 patients were head trauma (in 6 patients); research protocols (in 3); nasal/orbital malformations (in 2); endocrinological and psychiatric evaluations (in 2); and vertebral bone anomaly without neurological signs, absence seizures, congenital ataxia, recurrent vomiting, developmental delay, and "check-up" at the explicit request of the parents (in 1 patient each). Seven patients underwent immediate surgery for low-grade glioma (4 patients) and craniopharyngioma, ependymoma, and choroid plexus papilloma (1 patient each); and 12 were treated conservatively or were observed. Ten of 12 conservatively treated patients remained stable (median follow-up time 1.8 years) and the other 2 underwent delayed surgery because of tumor progression (medulloblastoma in one patient and fibrillary astrocytoma in the other). Clinicians are increasingly challenged by the discovery of incidental CNS mass lesions. A subgroup of such lesions (with typical imaging patterns such as tectal glioma and dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumor) can be monitored conservatively, clinically, and radiographically. Future prospective studies are needed to define optimal management strategies based on larger collections of natural histories, as well as to assess the true prevalence of incidental CNS mass lesions