El Pla Territorial de l'illa de Menorca

El Pla Territorial de Menorca és un exemple d’aplicació dels criteris de desenvolupament sostenible a la realitat territorial de l’Illa. Aquests criteris condueixen tot el procés planificador i troben un bon suport en la societat menorquina, que és ben conscient de la qualitat, i també de la fragilitat, del seu territori. Menorca opta així per un model territorial diferenciat que pretén fer compatible economia i respecte als recursos naturals i al paisatge. El Pla introdueix mesures de protecció sobre la totalitat del sòl rústic, per tal de preservar la diversitat d’àmbits rurals, tant naturals com humanitzats, tots ells amb valor paisatgístic remarcable. Amplia els espais naturals protegits, de tal manera que es passa de tenir una sèrie inconnexa d’espais naturals protegits a establir un vertader sistema d’espais naturals protegits. Limita el creixement de les zones turístiques, a fi que aquestes puguin ser reconduïdes a paràmetres de més qualitat i preveu un desenvolupament harmònic dins els nuclis tradicionals de població

Domain adaptation with conditional transferable components

© 2016 by the author(s). Domain adaptation arises in supervised learning when the training (source domain) and test (target domain) data have different distribution- s. Let X and Y denote the features and target, respectively, previous work on domain adaptation mainly considers the covariate shift situation where the distribution of the features P(X) changes across domains while the conditional distribution P(Y\X) stays the same. To reduce domain discrepancy, recent methods try to find invariant components T(X) that have similar P(T(X)) on different domains by explicitly minimizing a distribution discrepancy measure. However, it is not clear if P(Y\T(X)) in different domains is also similar when P(Y/X)changes. Furthermore, transferable components do not necessarily have to be invariant. If the change in some components is identifiable, we can make use of such components for prediction in the target domain. In this paper, we focus on the case where P{X ,Y) and P(Y') both change in a causal system in which Y is the cause for X. Under appropriate assumptions, we aim to extract conditional transferable components whose conditional distribution P(T{X)\Y) is invariant after proper location-scale (LS) transformations, and identify how P{Y) changes between domains simultaneously. We provide theoretical analysis and empirical evaluation on both synthetic and real-world data to show the effectiveness of our method

Learning, Social Intelligence and the Turing Test - why an "out-of-the-box" Turing Machine will not pass the Turing Test

The Turing Test (TT) checks for human intelligence, rather than any putative general intelligence. It involves repeated interaction requiring learning in the form of adaption to the human conversation partner. It is a macro-level post-hoc test in contrast to the definition of a Turing Machine (TM), which is a prior micro-level definition. This raises the question of whether learning is just another computational process, i.e. can be implemented as a TM. Here we argue that learning or adaption is fundamentally different from computation, though it does involve processes that can be seen as computations. To illustrate this difference we compare (a) designing a TM and (b) learning a TM, defining them for the purpose of the argument. We show that there is a well-defined sequence of problems which are not effectively designable but are learnable, in the form of the bounded halting problem. Some characteristics of human intelligence are reviewed including it's: interactive nature, learning abilities, imitative tendencies, linguistic ability and context-dependency. A story that explains some of these is the Social Intelligence Hypothesis. If this is broadly correct, this points to the necessity of a considerable period of acculturation (social learning in context) if an artificial intelligence is to pass the TT. Whilst it is always possible to 'compile' the results of learning into a TM, this would not be a designed TM and would not be able to continually adapt (pass future TTs). We conclude three things, namely that: a purely "designed" TM will never pass the TT; that there is no such thing as a general intelligence since it necessary involves learning; and that learning/adaption and computation should be clearly distinguished.Comment: 10 pages, invited talk at Turing Centenary Conference CiE 2012, special session on "The Turing Test and Thinking Machines

Coordinated analysis of age, sex, and education effects on change in MMSE scores

Objectives. We describe and compare the expected performance trajectories of older adults on the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) across six independent studies from four countries in the context of a collaborative network of longitudinal studies of aging. A coordinated analysis approach is used to compare patterns of change conditional on sample composition differences related to age, sex, and education. Such coordination accelerates evaluation of particular hypotheses. In particular, we focus on the effect of educational attainment on cognitive decline.Method. Regular and Tobit mixed models were fit to MMSE scores from each study separately. The effects of age, sex, and education were examined based on more than one centering point.Results. Findings were relatively consistent across studies. On average, MMSE scores were lower for older individuals and declined over time. Education predicted MMSE score, but, with two exceptions, was not associated with decline in MMSE over time.Conclusion. A straightforward association between educational attainment and rate of cognitive decline was not supported. Thoughtful consideration is needed when synthesizing evidence across studies, as methodologies adopted and sample characteristics, such as educational attainment, invariably differ. © 2012 The Author

Impact of Home Visit Capacity on Genetic Association Studies of Late-Onset Alzheimer\u27s Disease

INTRODUCTION—Findings for genetic correlates of late-onset Alzheimer\u27s disease (LOAD) in studies that rely solely on clinic visits may differ from those with capacity to follow participants unable to attend clinic visits. METHODS—We evaluated previously identified LOAD-risk single nucleotide variants in the prospective Adult Changes in Thought study, comparing hazard ratios (HRs) estimated using the full data set of both in-home and clinic visits (n = 1697) to HRs estimated using only data that were obtained from clinic visits (n = 1308). Models were adjusted for age, sex, principal components to account for ancestry, and additional health indicators. RESULTS—LOAD associations nominally differed for 4 of 21 variants; CR1 and APOE variants were significant after Bonferroni correction. DISCUSSION—Estimates of genetic associations may differ for studies limited to clinic-only designs. Home visit capacity should be explored as a possible source of heterogeneity and potential bias in genetic studies

Bachelors, Divorcees, and Widowers: Does Marriage Protect Men from Type 2 Diabetes?

While research has suggested that being married may confer a health advantage, few studies to date have investigated the role of marital status in the development of type 2 diabetes. We examined whether men who are not married have increased risk of incident type 2 diabetes in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Men (n = 41,378) who were free of T2D in 1986, were followed for ≤22 years with biennial reports of T2D, marital status and covariates. Cox proportional hazard models were used to compare risk of incident T2D by marital status (married vs unmarried and married vs never married, divorced/separated, or widowed). There were 2,952 cases of incident T2D. Compared to married men, unmarried men had a 16% higher risk of developing T2D (95%CI:1.04,1.30), adjusting for age, family history of diabetes, ethnicity, lifestyle and body mass index (BMI). Relative risks (RR) for developing T2D differed for divorced/separated (1.09 [95%CI: 0.94,1.27]), widowed (1.29 [95%CI:1.06,1.57]), and never married (1.17 [95%CI:0.91,1.52]) after adjusting for age, family history of diabetes and ethnicity. Adjusting for lifestyle and BMI, the RR for T2D associated with widowhood was no longer significant (RR:1.16 [95%CI:0.95,1.41]). When allowing for a 2-year lag period between marital status and disease, RRs of T2D for widowers were augmented and borderline significant (RR:1.24 [95%CI:1.00,1.54]) after full adjustment. In conclusion, not being married, and more specifically, widowhood was more consistently associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes in men and this may be mediated, in part, through unfavorable changes in lifestyle, diet and adiposity

Access to recreational physical activities by car and bus : an assessment of socio-spatial inequalities in mainland Scotland

Obesity and other chronic conditions linked with low levels of physical activity (PA) are associated with deprivation. One reason for this could be that it is more difficult for low-income groups to access recreational PA facilities such as swimming pools and sports centres than high-income groups. In this paper, we explore the distribution of access to PA facilities by car and bus across mainland Scotland by income deprivation at datazone level. GIS car and bus networks were created to determine the number of PA facilities accessible within travel times of 10, 20 and 30 minutes. Multilevel negative binomial regression models were then used to investigate the distribution of the number of accessible facilities, adjusting for datazone population size and local authority. Access to PA facilities by car was significantly (p<0.01) higher for the most affluent quintile of area-based income deprivation than for most other quintiles in small towns and all other quintiles in rural areas. Accessibility by bus was significantly lower for the most affluent quintile than for other quintiles in urban areas and small towns, but not in rural areas. Overall, we found that the most disadvantaged groups were those without access to a car and living in the most affluent areas or in rural areas

Initiation of antidepressant medication and risk of incident stroke: using the Adult Changes in Thought cohort to address time-varying confounding

Purpose Depression strongly predicts stroke incidence, suggesting that treating depression may reduce stroke risk. Antidepressant medications, however, may increase stroke risk via direct pathways. Previous evidence on antidepressant medication and stroke incidence is mixed. We evaluated associations between antidepressant use and incident stroke. Methods For 2302 Adult Changes in Thought cohort participants with no stroke at study entry, we characterized antidepressant use from pharmacy records, biennial depressive symptoms with a 10-item Centers for Epidemiologic Study–Depression scale, and incident strokes from ICD codes. We used discrete-time survival models with inverse probability weighting to compare stroke risk associated with filling antidepressant prescriptions and by medication category: tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or other. Results Over an average 8.4-year follow-up, 441 incident strokes occurred. Filling antidepressant medications 3+ times versus 0–2 times predicted 35% increased odds of stroke (OR = 1.35; 95% CI: 0.98, 1.66). Use of TCAs was associated with stroke onset (OR per 10 fills = 1.28; CI: 1.04, 1.57), but use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (OR = 0.98; CI: 0.80, 1.20) or other antidepressants (OR = 0.99; CI: 0.67, 1.45) was not. Conclusions Although patients who received antidepressant medication were at higher risk of stroke, this association appeared specific to TCA prescriptions

Multi-level selection and the issue of environmental homogeneity

In this paper, I identify two general positions with respect to the relationship between environment and natural selection. These positions consist in claiming that selective claims need and, respectively, need not be relativized to homogenous environments. I then show that adopting one or the other position makes a difference with respect to the way in which the effects of selection are to be measured in certain cases in which the focal population is distributed over heterogeneous environments. Moreover, I show that these two positions lead to two different interpretations – the Pricean and contextualist ones – of a type of selection scenarios in which multiple groups varying in properties affect the change in the metapopulation mean of individual-level traits. Showing that these two interpretations stem from different attitudes towards environmental homogeneity allows me to argue: a) that, unlike the Pricean interpretation, the contextualist interpretation can only claim that drift or selection is responsible for the change in frequency of the focal trait in a given metapopulation if details about whether or not group formation is random are specified; b) that the traditional main objection against the Pricean interpretation – consisting in arguing that the latter takes certain side-effects of individual selection to be effects of group selection – is unconvincing. This leads me to suggest that the ongoing debate about which of the two interpretations is preferable should concentrate on different issues than previously thought