Re-challenge chemotherapy with gemcitabine plus carboplatin in patients with non-small cell lung cancer

Despite recent improvements to current therapies and the emergence of novel agents to manage advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the patients' overall survival remains poor. Re-challenging with first-line chemotherapy upon relapse is common in the management of small cell lung cancer but is not well reported for advanced NSCLC. NSCLC relapse has been attributed to acquired drug resistance, but the repopulation of sensitive clones may also play a role, in which case re-challenge may be appropriate. Here, we report the results of re-challenge with gemcitabine plus carboplatin in 22 patients from a single institution who had previously received gemcitabine plus platinum in the first-line setting and had either partial response or a progression-free interval of longer than 6 months. In this retrospective study, the charts of patients who underwent second-line chemotherapy for NSCLC in our cancer center between January 2005 and April 2010 were reviewed. All the patients who received a combination of gemcitabine and carboplatin for re-challenge were included in the study. These patients were offered second-line treatment on confirmation of clear radiological disease progression. The overall response rate was 15% and disease control rate was 75%. The median survival time was 10.4 months, with 46% of patients alive at 1 year. These results suggest that re-challenge chemotherapy should be considered in selected patients with radiological partial response or a progression-free survival of longer than 6 months to the initial therapy.

Women (Re)Negotiating Care across Family Generations: Intersections of Gender and Socioeconomic Status

Changing Generations, a study of intergenerational relations in Ireland undertaken between 2011 and 2013 by the Social Policy and Ageing Research Centre (SPARC), Trinity College, Dublin, and the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology (ICSG), NUI Galway, used the Constructivist Grounded Theory method to interrogate support and care provision between generations. This article draws on interviews with 52 women ages 18 to 102, allowing for simultaneous analysis of older and younger women’s perspectives. The intersectionality of gender and class emerged as central to the analysis. Socioeconomic positions shape contrasting forms of interdependency among family generations, ranging from “enmeshed” lives among lower socioeconomic groups to “freed” lives among higher socioeconomic groups. Women are initiating changes in how care and support flow across generations. Older women in higher socioeconomic groups are attuned to how emotional capital women expend across family generations can constrain (young) women’s lives. In an expression of solidarity, older women are renegotiating the place of care labor in their own lives and in the lives of younger women. A new reciprocity emerges that amounts to women “undoing gender.” This process is, however, deeply classed as it is women in higher socioeconomic groups whose resources best place them to renegotiate care.

(Re)-Introducing Themes of Religion and Spirituality to Professional Social Work Training in the Land of ‘Saints and Scholars’.

This chapter begins by alluding to Ireland’s historical reputation as the land of “Saints and Scholars” and then briefly charts its demise from this position. A parallel process in relation to religiously motivated provision of health and social care is outlined. The inclusion of themes of religion and spirituality within the current professional social work codes in the USA and Britain and the framework for social work training in Northern Ireland is noted. In this context the lack of any substantive inclusion of themes of religion and/or spirituality within the Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) degree at Queens University Belfast will be situated. A series of intersecting reasons for this lack of inclusion are proposed in terms of the experience of living through the recent troubled history of Northern Ireland and a variety of biases in academic thought.
A rationale for the re-introduction of inputs on religion and spirituality is articulated in terms of the widespread resurgence of these themes within health and social care and psychotherapy literature and the new emphasis on practicing in culturally sensitive ways in Britain. The first steps to re-introduce these themes under the higher context marker of “culturally competent practice” are described and an analysis of data from the students’ feedback presented along with illustrative quotations. The dissonance between the initial misgivings of staff and the overwhelmingly positive responses of students are highlighted. The chapter concludes with a discussion of lessons learned through the process with an emphasis on how the inclusion of these themes can result in better practice for service users, including those impacted by “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland.

Πολιτικες ασύλου της ΕΕ- A critical review of the European policies of asylum: The re-positioning of asylum seekers from refugees/victims in need of protection to criminals (illegal immigrants)

This publication traces how asylum seekers are repositioned in the existing European asylum legislation from asylum seekers as victims in need of protection, to criminals . It is argued that this is due to the European legislation concerning the area of freedom, security and justice. The latest asylum legislation seems to undermine the refugee status which -as it is widely known- is safeguarded by the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its relevant 1967 Protocol. Additionally, in this paper the role of social workers and other social scientists to protect the rights of asylum seekers and question the existing legislation is presented.

"...and they won land among the Picts by friendly treaty or the sword": How a re-examination of early historical sources and an analysis of early medieval settlement in north Co. Antrim confirms the validity of traditional accounts of Dál Riatic migration to Scotland from Ulster

Much recent scholarship has been critical of the concept of a Dál Riatic migration to, or colonisation of, Argyll. Scepticism of the accuracy of the early medieval accounts of this population movement, arguing that these are late amendments to early sources, coupled with an apparent lack of archaeological evidence for such a migration have led to its rejection. It is argued here, however, that this rejection has been based on too narrow a reading of historical sources and that there are several early accounts which, while differing in detail, agree on one point of substance, that the origin of Scottish Dál Riata lies in Ireland. Also, the use of archaeological evidence to suggest no migration to Argyll by the Dál Riata is flawed, misunderstanding the nature of early migrations and how they might be archaeologically identified, and it's proposed that there is actually quite a lot of evidence for migration to Argyll by the Dál Riata, in the form of settlement and artefactural evidence, but that it is to be found in Ireland through the mechanism of counterstream migration, rather than in Scotland.

Re-embedding economic and social constitutionalism: Normative Perspectives for the E

This chapter proposes a social re-embedding of European constitutionalism by offering a coherent interpretation of EU constitutional principles as contained in the initial articles of the Treaties and the EU’s economic and social constitution as developed by the Court of Justice. It starts from the assumption that European integration is not merely an inter-state endeavour, but also a process that affects social and economic actors, in other words societies all over Europe. It may well ultimately engender a European society – if we are prepared to conceive of a poly-centric society, consisting of diverse components from a wide range of regions, social actors and cultures. Proceeding from the assumption that constitutionalism can be a relevant notion for such a holistic approach to European integration, the chapter develops elements of European constitutionalism relating to socio-economic reality. As national constitutional law, European constitutional law is presented as necessarily incomplete. European constitutionalism will thus have to offer modes of adapting open norms to an ever changing and developing societal reality. The chapter outlines a framework for such constitutionalism which, at the same time, offers opportunities for reconciling the social and economic dimensions in the European integration project through a re-configured notion of constitutionalism.

European Border Regions in Comparison: Overcoming Nationalistic Aspects or Re-Nationalization?

Essay Review of Katarzyna Stokłosa and Gerhard Besier (eds) (2014) European Border Regions in Comparison: Overcoming Nationalistic Aspects or Re-Nationalization? (London: Routledge)

Ranking Spatial and Temporal Hotspots for Road Safety Interventions Using a Nonlinear Aggregation Approach

In recent years, the concept of a composite performance index, brought from economic and business statistics, has gained popularity in the field of road safety. The construction of the Composite Safety Performance Index (CSPI) involves the following key steps: the selection of the most appropriate indicators to be aggregated and the method used to aggregate them.

Over the last decade, various aggregation methods for estimating the CSPI have been suggested in the literature. However, recent studies indicates that most of these methods suffer from many deficiencies at both the theoretical and operational level; these include the correlation and compensability between indicators, as well as their high “degree of freedom” which enables one to readily manipulate them to produce desired outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to introduce an alternative aggregation method for the estimation of the CSPI, which is free from the aforementioned deficiencies. In contrast with the current aggregation methods, which generally use linear combinations of road safety indicators to estimate a CSPI, the approach advocated in this study is based on non-linear combinations of indicators and can be summarized into the following two main steps: the pairwise comparison of road safety indicators and the development of marginal and composite road safety performance functions. The introduced method has been successfully applied to identify and rank temporal and spatial hotspots for Northern Ireland, using road traffic collision data recorded in the UK STATs19 database. The obtained results highlight the promising features of the proposed approach including its stability and consistency, which enables significantly reduced deficiencies associated with the current aggregation methods. Progressively, the introduced method could evolve into an intelligent support system for road safety assessment.

Re-Visiting Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sylvia Townsend Warner was born in 1893 in Harrow and died in Dorset in 1978. Her writing career was both productive and diverse, spanning poems, short stories, novels, music reviews, a biography, translations of Proust, and a guide to Somerset. But this list, impressive as it is, does not do justice to the idiosyncrasy and heterogeneity of her work. While she is well known mostly for the seven novels she published, those works are all radically different in style and content. Indeed, Townsend Warner's singularity has, it could be argued, made it difficult to place her in the various fields and sub-fields of 20th-century literary studies. She shares as many similarities as differences with the high modernists who dominated the literary landscape of the interwar period. Likewise she fits, yet also resists, the more recent formulations of intermodernist and middlebrow scholarship that have attempted to interrogate and expand the horizons of mid-20th century literature.