7,520 research outputs found
Immune checkpoint inhibitors in renal cell carcinoma
The immune system has long been known to play a critical role in the body's defence against cancer, and there have been multiple attempts to harness it for therapeutic gain. Renal cancer was, historically, one of a small number of tumour types where immune manipulation had been shown to be effective. The current generation of immune checkpoint inhibitors are rapidly entering into routine clinical practice in the management of a number of tumour types, including renal cancer, where one drug, nivolumab, an anti-programmed death-1 (PD-1) monoclonal antibody (mAb), is licensed for patients who have progressed on prior systemic treatment. Ongoing trials aim to maximize the benefits that can be gained from this new class of drug by exploring optimal timing in the natural course of the disease as well as combinations with other checkpoint inhibitors and drugs from different classes
The significance of the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect revisited
We revisit the state of the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect measurements
in light of newly available data and address criticisms about the measurements
which have recently been raised. We update the data set previously assembled by
Giannantonio et al. to include new data releases for both the cosmic microwave
background (CMB) and the large-scale structure (LSS) of the Universe. We find
that our updated results are consistent with previous measurements. By fitting
a single template amplitude, we now obtain a combined significance of the ISW
detection at the 4.4 sigma level, which fluctuates by 0.4 sigma when
alternative data cuts and analysis assumptions are considered. We also make new
tests for systematic contaminations of the data, focusing in particular on the
issues raised by Sawangwit et al. Amongst them, we address the rotation test,
which aims at checking for possible systematics by correlating pairs of
randomly rotated maps. We find results consistent with the expected data
covariance, no evidence for enhanced correlation on any preferred axis of
rotation, and therefore no indication of any additional systematic
contamination. We publicly release the results, the covariance matrix, and the
sky maps used to obtain them.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures. MNRAS in pres
Improved primordial non-gaussianity constraints from measurements of galaxy clustering and the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect
We present the strongest robust constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity
(PNG) from currently available galaxy surveys, combining large-scale clustering
measurements and their cross-correlations with the cosmic microwave background.
We update the data sets used by Giannantonio et al. (2012), and broaden that
analysis to include the full set of two-point correlation functions between all
surveys. In order to obtain the most reliable constraints on PNG, we advocate
the use of the cross-correlations between the catalogs as a robust estimator
and we perform an extended analysis of the possible systematics to reduce their
impact on the results. To minimize the impact of stellar contamination in our
luminous red galaxy (LRG) sample, we use the recent Baryon Oscillations
Spectroscopic Survey catalog of Ross et al. (2011). We also find evidence for a
new systematic in the NVSS radio galaxy survey similar to, but smaller than,
the known declination-dependent issue; this is difficult to remove without
affecting the inferred PNG signal, and thus we do not include the NVSS
auto-correlation function in our analyses. We find no evidence of primordial
non-Gaussianity; for the local-type configuration we obtain for the skewness
parameter at 95 % c.l. ( at )
when using the most conservative part of our data set, improving previous
results; we also find no evidence for significant kurtosis, parameterized by
. In addition to PNG, we simultaneously constrain dark energy
and find that it is required with a form consistent with a cosmological
constant.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figures. More conservative treatment of the NVSS data,
version accepted by Phys. Rev.
The New Left and the Human Service Professions
There are three characteristics of the New Left which had impact on social and human service professionals. Egalitarianism produced distrustof orthodox professional detachment from and power over poor and minority persons. The movement also gave expression to guilt, for some, over their privileged backgrounds. The New Left\u27s decentralist views about power produced an orientation to local insurgency: the organization of neighborhood and community activist organizations. In combination, for those influenced by the movement and entering the professions, a characteristic type of new professionalism arose: advocacy for the interests and organizations of the oppressed. Illustrations of this process are found in city planning and the academic disciplines, as well as other traditional and social service professions
Problems of Advocacy
The recent past has seen the erosion, and among some, the rejection, of social science neutrality and professional detachment. Among the typical expressions of a new professionalism is the underdog advocate, who wishes to lend his or her skills to the cause of less-than-equal groups in the society. The paper analyzes the problems confronting such advocates. The first is the discrepancy between career routes and success behavior on one hand, and the needs of poor people on the other. The second is the difficulty encountered by middle strata professionals in cross-class and cross-cultural communication, including their own ignorance of the structure and dynamics of minority and poor peoples\u27 communities. The third problem faced by the advocates is that the mere addition of their expert skills to the struggles of the deprived is not necessarily or usually adequate in terms of power resources. If advocates have, however, a modest definition of their possible accomplishment, and if they view underprivileged groups as the main actors in their own behalf, their roles may be defined more realistically
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