Periodismo, guerra y propaganda: la censura de prensa en Portugal durante la Guerra Civil española

This article is an approximation to the knowledge of the censorship instruments used by the Estado Novo portuguese dictatorship in the trirthies and its effects on the lusitanian press during the spanish civil war. The investigation, based in several spanish and portuguese archives documental sources, tried specially to analyse what was the Salazar government propagandistic role during the spanish war through the study of Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional and Serviços de Censura policy information.Este artículo es una aproximación al conocimiento de los instrumentos de censura y propaganda utilizados por la dictadura portuguesa del Estado Novo en los años treinta y sus efectos sobre la prensa durante la guerra civil española. La investigación, basada en fuentes documentales de archivos españoles y portugueses, trata de analizar de modo particular cuál fue el papel propagandístico que jugó el gobierno de Salazar durante el conflicto bélico español a través del estudio de la política informativa del Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional y los Serviços de Censura

Sintonía de combate. La propaganda del Rádio Club Português en la Guerra Civil española (1936-1939)

This article explores the role played by the Portuguese radio station Rádio Club Português (RCP) as a propaganda tool in the Spanish Civil War, in which Portugal supported the coup d’état against the Second Republic. The study has three fundamental objectives: to analyze the contents of the radio station’s broadcasts, to investigate its propaganda strategy, and to evaluate its impact on public opinion in Spain. With this objective, qualitative techniques and diverse historical sources were used, the analysis of which made it possible to conclude that the RCP planned an effective propaganda campaign against the Spanish democratic government that had great influence in the course of the armed conflict. The RCP increased the potency of its broadcasts, hired pro-Franco Spanish newscasters, and transmitted program contents favorable to the rebels throughout the course of the war

Surface-Based tools for Characterizing the Human Brain Cortical Morphology

Tesis por compendio de publicacionesThe cortex of the human brain is highly convoluted. These characteristic convolutions present advantages over lissencephalic brains. For instance, gyrification allows an expansion of cortical surface area without significantly increasing the cranial volume, thus facilitating the pass of the head through the birth channel. Studying the human brain’s cortical morphology and the processes leading to the cortical folds has been critical for an increased understanding of the pathological processes driving psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, autism, or major depression. Furthermore, charting the normal developmental changes in cortical morphology during adolescence or aging can be of great importance for detecting deviances that may be precursors for pathology. However, the exact mechanisms that push cortical folding remain largely unknown. The accurate characterization of the neurodevelopment processes is challenging. Multiple mechanisms co-occur at a molecular or cellular level and can only be studied through the analysis of ex-vivo samples, usually of animal models. Magnetic Resonance Imaging can partially fill the breach, allowing the portrayal of the macroscopic processes surfacing on in-vivo samples. Different metrics have been defined to measure cortical structure to describe the brain’s morphological changes and infer the associated microstructural events. Metrics such as cortical thickness, surface area, or cortical volume help establish a relation between the measured voxels on a magnetic resonance image and the underlying biological processes. However, the existing methods present limitations or room for improvement. Methods extracting the lines representing the gyral and sulcal morphology tend to over- or underestimate the total length. These lines can provide important information about how sulcal and gyral regions function differently due to their distinctive ontogenesis. Nevertheless, some methods label every small fold on the cortical surface as a sulcal fundus, thus losing the perspective of lines that travel through the deeper zones of a sulcal basin. On the other hand, some methods are too restrictive, labeling sulcal fundi only for a bunch of primary folds. To overcome this issue, we have proposed a Laplacian-collapse-based algorithm that can delineate the lines traversing the top regions of the gyri and the fundi of the sulci avoiding anastomotic sulci. For this, the cortex, represented as a 3D surface, is segmented into gyral and sulcal surfaces attending to the curvature and depth at every point of the mesh. Each resulting surface is spatially filtered, smoothing the boundaries. Then, a Laplacian-collapse-based algorithm is applied to obtain a thinned representation of the morphology of each structure. These thin curves are processed to detect where the extremities or endpoints lie. Finally, sulcal fundi and gyral crown lines are obtained by eroding the surfaces while preserving the structure topology and connectivity between the endpoints. The assessment of the presented algorithm showed that the labeled sulcal lines were close to the proposed ground truth length values while crossing through the deeper (and more curved) regions. The tool also obtained reproducibility scores better or similar to those of previous algorithms. A second limitation of the existing metrics concerns the measurement of sulcal width. This metric, understood as the physical distance between the points on opposite sulcal banks, can come in handy in detecting cortical flattening or complementing the information provided by cortical thickness, gyrification index, or such features. Nevertheless, existing methods only provided averaged measurements for different predefined sulcal regions, greatly restricting the possibilities of sulcal width and ignoring the intra-region variability. Regarding this, we developed a method that estimates the distance from each sulcal point in the cortex to its corresponding opposite, thus providing a per-vertex map of the physical sulcal distances. For this, the cortical surface is sampled at different depth levels, detecting the points where the sulcal banks change. The points corresponding to each sulcal wall are matched with the closest point on a different one. The distance between those points is the sulcal width. The algorithm was validated against a simulated sulcus that resembles a simple fold. Then the tool was used on a real dataset and compared against two widely-used sulcal width estimation methods, averaging the proposed algorithm’s values into the same region definition those reference tools use. The resulting values were similar for the proposed and the reference methods, thus demonstrating the algorithm’s accuracy. Finally, both algorithms were tested on a real aging population dataset to prove the methods’ potential in a use-case scenario. The main idea was to elucidate fine-grained morphological changes in the human cortex with aging by conducting three analyses: a comparison of the age-dependencies of cortical thickness in gyral and sulcal lines, an analysis of how the sulcal and gyral length changes with age, and a vertex-wise study of sulcal width and cortical thickness. These analyses showed a general flattening of the cortex with aging, with interesting findings such as a differential age-dependency of thickness thinning in the sulcal and gyral regions. By demonstrating that our method can detect this difference, our results can pave the way for future in vivo studies focusing on macro- and microscopic changes specific to gyri or sulci. Our method can generate new brain-based biomarkers specific to sulci and gyri, and these can be used on large samples to establish normative models to which patients can be compared. In parallel, the vertex-wise analyses show that sulcal width is very sensitive to changes during aging, independent of cortical thickness. This corroborates the concept of sulcal width as a metric that explains, in the least, the unique variance of morphology not fully captured by existing metrics. Our method allows for sulcal width vertex-wise analyses that were not possible previously, potentially changing our understanding of how changes in sulcal width shape cortical morphology. In conclusion, this thesis presents two new tools, open source and publicly available, for estimating cortical surface-based morphometrics. The methods have been validated and assessed against existing algorithms. They have also been tested on a real dataset, providing new, exciting insights into cortical morphology and showing their potential for defining innovative biomarkers.Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología Biomédica por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Juan Domingo Gispert López.- Secretario: Norberto Malpica González de Vega.- Vocal: Gemma Cristina Monté Rubi

Fighting from Portugal for a new Spain: the ‘Black embassy’ in Lisbon during the spanish Civil War: information, press and propaganda

This article analyses the information actions undertaken by General Franco’s diplomatic services in Portugal and their relationship with the Portuguese media during the Spanish Civil War. The source documents from Spanish and Portuguese archives used for this work prove that the so-called “black embassy”, acting in the service of the Spanish rebel militaries, had a strong influence on the Portuguese press and radio, which facilitated the dissemination of propaganda and shaped their information discourse to serve the interests of the Francoist side with the aid of the Portuguese government, an ally of the insurgents against the legal government in Madrid. In order to legitimise internationally the military coup and to publicise Franco’s new Spain, the “black embassy” carried out an intense media activity which included the spreading of false information, institutional declarations, press releases or photo montages.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. HAR2015-68492-

Yield Management

Historically, airlines have operated in a tightly regulated environment. This environment has been regulated by governments and self-regulated through organizations such as the International Air Transport Association (IATA) The early airline policy for the fare activities was based on offering all the seats on the airplane (or in the coach of the airplane) at the same rate. When the industry entered the 1960s with bigger and faster planes, new types of fares were being approved by the Civil Aeronautical Board (CAB) on certain routes, including lower-night coach fares, and tour-basing fares. There were no capacity controls on these fares. All of the seats were up for grabs and were sold on a first come, first-served basis, provided only that the conditions of the fares were met. By the end of the sixties, airlines were looking at day-of-week load factor patterns and introduced midweek and weekend fare differentials to stimulate new demand for low load factor flights. High-season and Low-season differential fares were also in place. At the same time as these new fares were being implemented, the move toward deregulation of the economic aspects of the airline industry was gaining speed. By the mid-1970s the carriers were aware that deregulation was going to happen. Intra state carriers like Southwest Airlines in Texas and Pacific Southwest in California, which were not subject to federal fare regulations, were filling up their planes with a low-cost, low-fare product and making money doing it. This caught the attention of consumers, legislators and regulators alike

REY GARCÍA, Marta, Stars for Spain. La Guerra Civil en los Estados Unidos.

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Las imágenes olvidadas de la guerra de Espana: el cine portugués y la propaganda franquista (1936-1939)

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TUBERCULOSIS IN PATIENTS WITH HAEMATOLOGICAL MALIGNANCIES

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that causes more than 1 million deaths worldwide every year. In addition, it is estimated that one third of the world population is infected with M. Tuberculosis in a latent state, which involves an eventual risk of progressing to active TB disease. Patients with immunodeficiencies, such as those suffering from haematological malignancies, have a greater risk of progressing to TB disease once infected. It is estimated that the Relative Risk of TB disease in patients with hematologic malignancies is 2-40 times that of general population. The diagnosis of TB in these patients is often difficult as they often present clinical characteristics that are distinct to those of patients without any other underlying disease. Mortality attributable to tuberculosis is higher. Therefore it is recommended to diagnose latent TB infection in order to offer a preventive therapy that could prevent the progression from a latent state to active TB disease. There are currently two methods for diagnosing latent TB infection: the Tuberculin Skin Test (TST) and the Interferon-Gamma Release Assays (IGRA). Due to the lack of sensitivity in patients with immunodeficient conditions, a combined TST-IGRA testing is probably the best way for latent TB diagnosis in order to gain sensitivity. Treatment of latent TB infection and TB disease should follow the general principles to that in general population