Building a Composite Indicator to Measure Environmental Sustainability Using Alternative Weighting Methods

Environmental sustainability in agriculture can be measured through the construction of composite indicators. However, this is a challenging task because these indexes are heavily dependent on how the individual base indicators are weighted. The main aim of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature regarding the robustness of subjective (based on experts’ opinions) weighting methods when constructing a composite indicator for measuring environmental sustainability at the farm level. In particular, the study analyzes two multi-criteria techniques, the analytic hierarchy process and the recently developed best-worst method, as well as the more straightforward point allocation method. These alternative methods have been implemented to empirically assess the environmental performance of irrigated olive farms in Spain. Data for this case study were collected from a panel of 22 experts and a survey of 99 farms. The results obtained suggest that there are no statistically significant differences in the weights of the individual base indicators derived from the three weighting methods considered. Moreover, the ranking of the sampled farms, in terms of their level of environmental sustainability measured through the composite indicators proposed, is not dependent on the use of the different weighting methods. Thus, the results support the robustness of the three weighting methods considered

Precautionary savings as an instrument to hedge the risk of hydrological drought in irrigated agriculture

This paper explores the use of precautionary savings as a new risk management instrument that can be implemented to hedge hydrological drought risk in irrigated agriculture, a risk currently not covered by any policy instrument. For this purpose, the Drought Savings Account (DSA) is proposed as a personal savings account to which farmers make regular contributions, with withdrawals allowed in the event of irrigation water supply gaps in order to guarantee a minimum income. The implementation of the DSA is empirically assessed in a Mediterranean-climate irrigation district using an innovative simulation approach. Based on the results obtained, the DSA has proved to be a theoretically suitable policy instrument that can overcome the problems hindering the implementation of agricultural insurance, managing the risk in a more cost-effective way. This cost-effectiveness is a key advantage of precautionary savings over agricultural insurance, since the former instrument minimizes moral hazard and adverse selection problems, and the transaction costs of risk-sharing. Moreover, in this context, precautionary savings may play a significant role as an efficient climate change adaptation measure since the self-insurance strategy adopted does not distort the signals underlying farmers’ own risk exposure, leading to better individual assessment and an adequate management of water supply gaps

The predictive power of farmers’ risk attitude measures elicited by experimental methods

Aim of study: Farmers’ behavior is shaped by their individual attitudes towards risk. Consequently, an understanding of the heterogeneous risk attitudes among farmers is key to predicting their decision-making. Therefore, there is a need for reliable methods to assess individuals’ risk attitudes. The main objective of this paper was to contribute to the existing literature about the external validity of risk attitude measures obtained with diverse experimental methods.Area of study: Irrigated agriculture in a Mediterranean climate region.Material and methods: Two different experimental methods widely applied in the agricultural sector were used to elicit farmers’ risk attitudes in a sample of irrigators in southern Spain: the Eckel and Grossman lottery-choice task and a self-assessment general risk question. We evaluated the explanatory power of both measures for the farming risk borne by farmers, using an approach based on dispersion measures of farming returns.Main results: Results revealed stability across these elicitation methods, but the study yielded no evidence of statistical correlation with the farming risk actually borne by farmers, suggesting that it may not be advisable to use these methods for directly predicting farmers’ decision-making in modeling exercises.Research highlights: The most relevant innovation of this paper was the validation approach followed, based on measures assessing the overall level of farming risk borne by individual producers, and the complementary analyses controlling for key variables that could affect farmer risk-taking

Computational intelligence techniques in medicine

El advenimiento de la Era de la Información, también conocida como la Era Digital, ha realizado un profundo impacto en las ciencias de la salud. Vastas cantidades de conjuntos de datos fluyen ahora a través de los diferentes estratos de las organizaciones sanitarias, y existe un requisito importante para extraer el conocimiento y emplearlo en la mejora de estos centros en todos los aspectos. Los sistemas informáticos inteligentes proporcionan apoyo a los profesionales de la salud implicados tanto en los contextos médicos como administrativos. Entre estos sistemas, métodos de inteligencia computacional han adquirido una creciente popularidad, dada su capacidad para hacer frente a grandes cantidades de datos clínicos e información precisa.El fin de esta edición especial es ofrecer una amplia visión de este apasionante campo, cuya creciente importancia es impulsada por el aumento de la disponibilidad de datos y sus potenciales de cálculo. The advent of the information age, also commonly known as the digital age, has made a profound impact on health sciences. Vast amounts of datasets now flow through the different stages of healthcare organizations, and there is a major requirement to extract knowledge and employ it to improve these centres in all respects. Intelligent computer systems provide support to health professionals involved both in the medical and managerial contexts. Amongst these systems, computational intelligence approaches have gained increasing popularity given their ability to cope with large amounts of clinical data and uncertain information. Thegoal of this special issue is to offer a broad view of this exciting field, the ever-growing importance of which is driven by the increasing availability of data and computational power.peerReviewe

Reactivity and fate of secondary alkane sulfonates (SAS) in marine sediments

This research is focused on secondary alkane sulfonates (SAS), anionic surfactants widely used in household applications that access aquatic environments mainly via sewage discharges.We studied their sorption capacity and anaerobic degradation in marine sediments, providing the first data available on this topic. SAS partition coefficients increased towards those homologues having longer alkyl chains(from up to 141 L kg 1 for C14 to up to 1753 L kg 1 for C17), which were those less susceptible to undergo biodegradation. Overall, SAS removal percentages reached up to 98% after 166 days of incubation using anoxic sediments. The degradation pathway consisted on the formation of sulfocarboxylic acids after an initial fumarate attack of the alkyl chain and successive b-oxidations. This is the first study showing that SAS can be degraded in absence of oxygen, so this new information should be taken into account for future environmental risk assessments on these chemicals

Opportunities for antibiotic optimisation and outcome improvement in patients with negative blood cultures: study protocol for a cluster-­randomised crossover trial, the NO-­BACT study.

Introduction Patients with negative blood cultures (BCx) represent 85%–90% of all patients with BCx taken during hospital admission. This population usually includes a heterogeneous group of patients admitted with infectious diseases or febrile syndromes that require a blood culture. There is very little evidence of the clinical characteristics and antibiotic treatment given to these patients. Methods and analysis In a preliminary exploratory prospective cohort study of patients with BCx taken, the clinical/therapeutic characteristics and outcomes/ antimicrobial stewardship opportunities of a population of patients with negative BCx will be analysed. In the second phase, using a cluster randomised crossover design, the implementation of an antimicrobial stewardship intervention targeting patients with negative BCx will be evaluated in terms of quality of antimicrobial use (duration and de-escalation), length of hospital stay and mortality. Ethics and dissemination This study has been and registered with clinicaltrials.gov. The findings of our study may support the implementation in clinical practice of an antimicrobial stewardship intervention to optimise the use of antibiotics in patients with negative BCx. The results of this study will be published in peer-reviewed journals and disseminated at national and international conferences. Trial registration number NCT03535324.Instituto de Salud Carlos III PI17 / 01809Plataforma Española de Investigación Clínica y Ensayos Clínicos, SCReN (Red Española de Investigación Clínica), financiada por la Subdirección General de Evaluación y Promoción de la Investigación ISCIII: PT17 / 0017/0012. Cofinanciado por el Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER)

Physical fitness and maternal body composition indices during pregnancy and postpartum: the GESTAFIT project

ABSTRACT We explored the association of physical fitness (PF) during pregnancy with maternal body composition indices along pregnancy and postpartum period. The study comprised 159 pregnant women (32.9 ± 4.7 years old). Assessments were carried out at the 16th and 34th gestational weeks (g.w.) and six weeks postpartum. Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), muscular strength (absolute and relative values) and flexibility were measured. Body composition indices were obtained by using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry at postpartum. The results, after adjusting for potential covariates at the 16th g.w., indicated that greater CRF was associated with lower postpartum indices total fat mass, android and gynoid fat mass (all, p < 0.05). Greater absolute upper-body muscular strength was associated with greater pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), gestational weight gain (GWG); and postpartum indices body weight, BMI, lean mass, fat free mass, fat mass, gynoid fat mass, T-score and Z-score bone mineral density (BMD) (all, p < 0.05). Greater upper-body flexibility was associated with lower pre-pregnancy BMI; and postpartum indices body weight, BMI, lean mass, fat free mass, fat mass, android fat mass and gynoid fat mass, and with greater GWG (all, p < 0.05). At the 34th g.w., greater CRF was additionally associated with greater postpartum T-score and Z-score BMD (both, p < 0.05). In conclusion, this study reveals that greater PF levels, especially during early pregnancy, may promote a better body composition in the postpartum period. Therefore, clinicians and health promoters should encourage women to maintain or improve PF levels from early pregnancy. KEYWORDS Cardiorespiratory fitness; strength; flexibility; bone density; gestation Highlights . Given that obesity is on the rise today, it is important to find strategies to cope with it, especially during pregnancy. . The results of the present study suggest that greater physical fitness during early pregnancy is key to promoting better body composition in the postpartum period. . It should be of clinical interest to encourage pregnant women to maintain or improve their physical fitness levels

Desempeño económico-financiero de los distintos modelos empresariales en el sector del aceite de oliva en España

The main objectives of this paper are twofold: first, to identify the different business models that exist in the olive oil sector in Spain; and second, to provide an analysis of the economic-financial performance of each identified business model. The methods used to achieve the two objectives include the factor analysis, the cluster analysis and the economic-financial analysis through the employment of ratios. The results of this paper show that in Spain there are five major business patterns or business models: i) large companies oriented to the olive oil exports; ii) small companies that export not only olive oil but also other complementary products; iii) commercial oil mills operating mainly in the national market; iv) cooperative oil mills oriented to the national market; and v) commercial companies whose main activity is the distribution of olive oil. Of these five business models identified, the most profitable and solvent corresponds to the one formed by the distribution companies, while the model of the large exporting companies presents serious problems of future viability.Los objetivos principales de este trabajo son dos: en primer lugar, identificar los distintos modelos empresariales que existen en el sector del aceite de oliva en España y, en segundo lugar, realizar un diagnóstico del desempeño económico-financiero de cada uno de los modelos empresariales identificados. Los métodos empleados para conseguir los objetivos propuestos incluyen el análisis factorial, el análisis clúster y el análisis económico-financiero mediante el empleo de ratios. Los resultados del trabajo demuestran que en España existen cinco grandes patrones empresariales: i) grandes empresas orientadas a la exportación de aceite de oliva; ii) empresas de reducida dimensión exportadoras no sólo de aceite de oliva, sino también de otros productos complementarios; iii) almazaras de tipo mercantil que operan principalmente en el mercado nacional; iv) almazaras cooperativas orientadas al mercado nacional; y v) sociedades mercantiles cuya actividad principal es la distribución de aceite de oliva. De estos cincos patrones empresariales identificados, el más rentable y solvente corresponde al conformado por las sociedades mercantiles distribuidoras, mientras que el modelo de las grandes empresas exportadoras presenta graves problemas de viabilidad futura

Vehicle Classification in Traffic Environments Using the Growing Neural Gas

Traffic monitoring is one of the most popular applications of automated video surveillance. Classification of the vehicles into types is important in order to provide the human traffic controllers with updated information about the characteristics of the traffic flow, which facilitates their decision making process. In this work, a video surveillance system is proposed to carry out such classification. First of all, a feature extraction process is carried out to obtain the most significant features of the detected vehicles. After that, a set of Growing Neural Gas neural networks is employed to determine their types. A qualitative and quantitative assessment of the proposal is carried out on a set of benchmark traffic video sequences, with favorable results.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Physiological Regulation of Isocitrate Dehydrogenase and the Role of 2-Oxoglutarate in Prochlorococcus sp. Strain PCC 9511

The enzyme isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICDH; EC 1.1.1.42) catalyzes the oxidative decarboxylation of isocitrate, to produce 2- oxoglutarate. The incompleteness of the tricarboxylic acids cycle in marine cyanobacteria confers a special importance to isocitrate dehydrogenase in the C/N balance, since 2-oxoglutarate can only be metabolized through the glutamine synthetase/glutamate synthase pathway. The physiological regulation of isocitrate dehydrogenase was studied in cultures of Prochlorococcus sp. strain PCC 9511, by measuring enzyme activity and concentration using the NADPH production assay and Western blotting, respectively. The enzyme activity showed little changes under nitrogen or phosphorus starvation, or upon addition of the inhibitors DCMU, DBMIB and MSX. Azaserine, an inhibitor of glutamate synthase, induced clear increases in the isocitrate dehydrogenase activity and icd gene expression after 24 h, and also in the 2-oxoglutarate concentration. Iron starvation had the most significant effect, inducing a complete loss of isocitrate dehydrogenase activity, possibly mediated by a process of oxidative inactivation, while its concentration was unaffected. Our results suggest that isocitrate dehydrogenase responds to changes in the intracellular concentration of 2-oxoglutarate and to the redox status of the cells in Prochlorococcus