Bolivia’s 2020 election: winning is only the beginning for Luis Arce and the MAS

The new MAS government of Luis Arce will be caught between popular expectations of a return to relative prosperity, a growing ecological catastrophe tied to a declining economic model, and a range of social and ideological challenges that pit right-wing religious forces against an increasingly progressive younger generation. But even if the years ahead will ... Continue

Exploring the Potential of the Web-Based Virtual World of Second Life to Improve Substance Abuse Treatment Outcomes

Provides an overview of Second Life, an Internet-based virtual world, and summarizes discussions among addiction recovery experts about integrating virtual reality into behavioral treatment as a way to teach patients new responses to real environments

On the Existence of a Generalized Solution of the Saturated-Unsaturated Filtration Problem

© 2018, Pleiades Publishing, Ltd. We study the existence of a generalized solution of an initial–boundary value problem describing the process of unsteady filtration of a liquid in a bounded region of an n-dimensional space. We consider the case in which the Kirchhoff transformation used to determine the generalized solution takes the real axis into a semiaxis bounded below. An auxiliary problem is constructed. It is proved that any solution of the auxiliary problem is a solution of the problem under study. The solvability of the auxiliary problem is established by using the method of semidiscretization in time and the Galerkin method

La política del gas natural y los límites de la autonomía guaraní en Bolivia

Basado en el caso de los territorios guaraníes y la expansión de la industria gasífera en el sudeste de Bolivia, este artículo ofrece reflexiones sobre las contradicciones entre el modelo extractivista de redistribución progresista y el discurso y las potencialidades de descolonización. Por un lado, el gobierno del ahora exilado Evo Morales dedicó gran parte de los recursos del gas a la redistribución social. Pero por otro lado, la reproducción de la economía del gas implicaba otros procesos y relaciones que contradicen profundamente el discurso de la descolonización. El gobierno hablaba de descolonizar el Estado, tanto internamente como en sus relaciones con poderes externos. Sin embargo, la dependencia en la industria de gas y la relación de éste con el capital extranjero minaba ambos esfuerzos. Las posibilidades de contrarrestar la larga trayectoria de la borradura colonial de la indigeneidad están limitadas por la dinámica de la extracción del gas, que no descoloniza, sino reproduce formas coloniales de reducir cuerpos y territorios en sus fronteras de expansión.    Based on the case of Guarani territories and the expansion of the natural gas industry in southeastern Bolivia, this article offers reflections on the contradictions between the extractivist model for progressive redistribution and the discourse and potentiality of decolonization. On one hand, the government of now-exiled Evo Morales dedicated a significant portion of gas royalties to social redistribution. But, on the other hand, the reproduction of the gas economy entailed other processes and relations that deeply contradicted the discourse of decolonization. The government spoke of decolonizing the State, internally as well as in its relations with external powers. Nonetheless, dependence on the gas industry and the relation between it and foreign capital undermined both efforts. The possibilities for stopping the long trajectory of colonial erasure of indigeneity are limited by the dynamics of gas extraction, which does not decolonize, but rather reproduces colonial forms of reducing bodies and territories on its expansive frontiers.Basado en el caso de los territorios guaraníes y la expansión de la industria gasífera en el sudeste de Bolivia, este artículo ofrece reflexiones sobre las contradicciones entre el modelo extractivista de redistribución progresista y el discurso y las potencialidades de descolonización. Por un lado, el gobierno del ahora exilado Evo Morales dedicó gran parte de los recursos del gas a la redistribución social. Pero por otro lado, la reproducción de la economía del gas implicaba otros procesos y relaciones que contradicen profundamente el discurso de la descolonización. El gobierno hablaba de descolonizar el Estado, tanto internamente como en sus relaciones con poderes externos. Sin embargo, la dependencia en la industria de gas y la relación de éste con el capital extranjero minaba ambos esfuerzos. Las posibilidades de contrarrestar la larga trayectoria de la borradura colonial de la indigeneidad están limitadas por la dinámica de la extracción del gas, que no descoloniza, sino reproduce formas coloniales de reducir cuerpos y territorios en sus fronteras de expansión.  

Indigenous and Popular Struggle for Realist Utopias in Bolivia and Ecuador

This essay reviews the following works

Communicating about self and others within an online support group for women with breast cancer and subsequent outcomes

Abstract Research suggests communicating too much about one's self within an online support group may amplify breast cancer patients' focus on their own problems and exacerbate negative emotions while focusing on others may have the opposite effects. This study explored how pronoun usage within an online support group was associated with subsequent mental health outcomes. There were 286 patients recruited into the study who filled out the pre-test and 231 completed post-tests four months later with survey measures including breast cancer-related concerns and negative emotions. Messages were analyzed using a program counting first person and relational pronouns. A positive relationship was found between use of first person pronouns and negative emotions

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival