Records security: case study of the Barcelona City Council Archive

The exponential growth of digital content in organizations and the obligation to ensure the preservation of documents makes the need more evident for mechanisms to ensure its authenticity, integrity and security. A case of the Archives of the Barcelona Town Hall, following the pioneering experience of the Amsterdam Town Hall Archives is presented. The Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) from Hitachi Data Systems  was installed as a secure repository of digital documents. The project also included a review of current working patterns in an effort to establish procedures and best practices for digitization

Prevalence study of intermittent hormonal therapy of Prostate Cancer patients in Spain

Background: Although intermittent androgen deprivation therapy was introduced many years ago to improve patients' quality of life with the same carcinologic efficiency as continuous hormonal therapy, recent data suggest that intermittency could be underutilised. This study aims to estimate the prevalence of prostate cancer patients receiving intermittent androgen deprivation therapy in Spain. Methods: A retrospective, longitudinal study was conducted using electronic drug dispensation data from four Spanish autonomous communities, which encompass 17.23 million inhabitants (36.22% of the total population in Spain). We estimated intermittent androgen therapy use (%IAD) and the prevalence of patients under intermittent androgen therapy in reference to the total number of PC patients using hormonal therapy (P IAD) and stratified by region. Other outcome variables included the pharmaceutical forms dispensed and the total direct annual expenditure on androgen deprivation therapy-associated medications. Results: A total of 863,005 dispensations corresponding to a total of 65,752 men were identified, treated with either luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) analogues (353,162) administered alone or in combination with anti-androgens (509,843). Overall, the mean (±SD) age of the patients was 76.9 (±10.4) years. Results revealed that the mean annual P IAD along the study was 6.6% in the total population studied, and the overall %IAD during the five-year study period was 5.6%. The mean cost of hormonal therapy per year was 25 million euros for LHRH analogues and 6.3 million euros for anti-androgens. Conclusions: Few prostate cancer patients in Spain use the intermittent androgen deprivation therapy suggesting underutilization of a perfectly valid option for a significant proportion of patients, missing the opportunity to improve their quality of life and to reduce costs for the National Health Service with comparable overall survival rates than continuous therapy.</p

Persistence with dual antiplatelet therapy after percutaneous coronary intervention for ST-segment elevation acute coronary syndrome: a population-based cohort study in Catalonia (Spain)

Objectives: Guidelines recommending 12-month dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) in patients with ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome (STEACS) undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) were published in year 2012. We aimed to describe the influence of guideline implementation on the trend in 12-month persistence with DAPT between 2010 and 2015 and to evaluate its relationship with DAPT duration regimens recommended at discharge from PCI hospitals. Design: Observational study based on region-wide registry data linked to pharmacy billing data for DAPT follow-up. Setting: All PCI hospitals (10) belonging to the acute myocardial infarction (AMI) code network in Catalonia (Spain). Participants: 10 711 STEACS patients undergoing PCI between 2010 and 2015 were followed up. Primary and secondary outcome measures: Primary outcome was 12-month persistence with DAPT. Calendar year quarter, publication of guidelines, DAPT duration regimen recommended in the hospital discharge report, baseline patient characteristics and significant interactions were included in mixed-effects logistic regression based interrupted time-series models. Results: The proportion of patients on-DAPT at 12 months increased from 58% (56-60) in 2010 to 73% (71-75) in 2015. The rate of 12-month persistence with DAPT significantly increased after the publication of clinical guidelines with a time lag of 1 year (OR=1.20; 95% CI 1.11 to 1.30). A higher risk profile, more extensive and complex coronary disease, use of drug-eluting stents (OR=1.90; 95% CI 1.50 to 2.40) and a 12-month DAPT regimen recommendation at discharge from the PCI hospital (OR=5.76; 95% CI 3.26 to 10.2) were associated with 12-month persistence. Conclusion: Persistence with 12-month DAPT has increased since publication of clinical guidelines. Even though most patients were discharged on DAPT, only 73% with potential indication were on-DAPT 12 months after PCI. A guideline-based recommendation at PCI hospital discharge was highly associated with full persistence with DAPT. Establishing evidence-based, common prescribing criteria across hospitals in the AMI-network would favour adherence and reduce variability

Agent Environments for Multi-agent Systems – A Research Roadmap

Ten years ago, researchers in multi-agent systems became more and more aware that agent systems consist of more than only agents. The series of workshops on Environments for Multi-Agent Systems (E4MAS 2004-2006) emerged from this awareness. One of the primary outcomes of this endeavor was a principled understanding that the agent environment should be considered as a primary design abstraction, equally important as the agents. A special issue in JAAMAS 2007 contributed a set of influential papers that define the role of agent environments, describe their engineering, and outline challenges in the field that have been the drivers for numerous follow up research efforts. The goal of this paper is to wrap up what has been achieved in the past 10 years and identify challenges for future research on agent environments. Instead of taking a broad perspective, we focus on three particularly relevant topics of modern software intensive systems: large scale, openness, and humans in the loop. For each topic, we reflect on the challenges outlined 10 years ago, present an example application that highlights the current trends, and from that outline challenges for the future. We conclude with a roadmap on how the different challenges could be tackled. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.Peer reviewe

Stability of SARS-CoV-2 spike antigens against mutations

Modern health care needs preventive vaccines and therapeutic treatments with stability against pathogen mutations to cope with current and future viral infections. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, our analytic and predictive tool identified a set of eight short SARS-CoV-2 S-spike protein epitopes that had the potential to persistently avoid mutation. Here a combination of genetic, Systems Biology and protein structure analyses confirm the stability of our identified epitopes against viral mutations. Remarkably, this research spans the whole period of the pandemic, during which 93.9% of the eight peptides remained invariable in the globally predominant 43 circulating variants, including Omicron. Likewise, the selected epitopes are conserved in 97% of all 1,514 known SARS-CoV-2 lineages. Finally, experimental analyses performed with these short peptides showed their specific immunoreactivity. This work opens a new perspective on the design of next-generation vaccines and antibody therapies that will remain reliable against future pathogen mutations.Dr. Lozano-Perez acknowledges the European Commission ERDF/FEDER Operational Program 'Murcia' CCI No. 2007ES161PO001 (Project No. 14-20/20). Miodrag Grbic acknowledges support from the NSERC Discovery grant (Canada). This work also has received funding from the Department of Education of the Basque Government via the Consolidated Research Group MATH MODE (IT1456-22). Besides, Ildefonso Martinez De la Fuente and Iker Malaina were supported by the UPV/EHU and Basque Center of Applied Mathematics, grant US21/27N

Studies on mycoplasmas in relation to porcine respiratory disease.

The isolation of M. hyopneumoniae from field material of cases of Enzootic Pneumonia is difficult since the pneumonic lungs also contain M. hyorhinis. Originally, only 3% of the infected lungs yielded M. hyopneumoniae on standard media. The difficulties were chiefly due to overgrowth of the cultures by M. hyorhinis. This, however, was largely overcome when kanamycin was added to the isolation medium; since 13% of pneumonia lungs yielded M. hyopneumoniae when this modified medium was used. Among the range of substances tested, this antibiotic proved to be the most successful in selectively inhibiting M. hyorhinis. The present studies have shown that these two organisms are indistinguishable from each other, as well as from most other porcine mycoplasmas, on the basis of their colonial appearance or cellular morphology. However, the two organisms were found to have a few characteristics which could be helpful in their differentiation. These included differences in heat-sensitivity, behaviour in tissue cultures and organ explants, and the Methylene Blue Staining technique which was useful in recognising colonies of M. hyopneumoniae when they were mixed with those of M. hyorhinis. The serological diagnosis of M. hyopneumoniae infections was also studied. It was demonstrated that in natural infections, this organism does not stimulate the production of macroglobulin antibodies, and therefore, neither agglutination or precipitation tests could be used as a means of diagnosing Enzootic Pneumonia. However, positive results were obtained with the complement-fixation test in all artificially infected animals. Immunofluorescence of lung smears was also useful, as it detected as many as 87.5% of recent cases of Enzootic Pneumonia. It was concluded therefore, that these two tests, together with the improved isolation procedures, could detect most field cases of M. hyopneumoniae infections. The action of various species of porcine mycoplasmas both in pig kidney primary cultures, and in pig tracheal explants, appeared to relate directly to their production of hydrogen peroxide. M. hyopneumoniae did not produce hydrogen peroxide, and therefore, the pathogenicity of this organism must involve a different mechanism. Alternative mechanisms for the production of pneumonia by M. hyopneumoniae are discussed

Studies on mycoplasmas in relation to porcine respiratory disease.

The isolation of M. hyopneumoniae from field material of cases of Enzootic Pneumonia is difficult since the pneumonic lungs also contain M. hyorhinis. Originally, only 3% of the infected lungs yielded M. hyopneumoniae on standard media. The difficulties were chiefly due to overgrowth of the cultures by M. hyorhinis. This, however, was largely overcome when kanamycin was added to the isolation medium; since 13% of pneumonia lungs yielded M. hyopneumoniae when this modified medium was used. Among the range of substances tested, this antibiotic proved to be the most successful in selectively inhibiting M. hyorhinis. The present studies have shown that these two organisms are indistinguishable from each other, as well as from most other porcine mycoplasmas, on the basis of their colonial appearance or cellular morphology. However, the two organisms were found to have a few characteristics which could be helpful in their differentiation. These included differences in heat-sensitivity, behaviour in tissue cultures and organ explants, and the Methylene Blue Staining technique which was useful in recognising colonies of M. hyopneumoniae when they were mixed with those of M. hyorhinis. The serological diagnosis of M. hyopneumoniae infections was also studied. It was demonstrated that in natural infections, this organism does not stimulate the production of macroglobulin antibodies, and therefore, neither agglutination or precipitation tests could be used as a means of diagnosing Enzootic Pneumonia. However, positive results were obtained with the complement-fixation test in all artificially infected animals. Immunofluorescence of lung smears was also useful, as it detected as many as 87.5% of recent cases of Enzootic Pneumonia. It was concluded therefore, that these two tests, together with the improved isolation procedures, could detect most field cases of M. hyopneumoniae infections. The action of various species of porcine mycoplasmas both in pig kidney primary cultures, and in pig tracheal explants, appeared to relate directly to their production of hydrogen peroxide. M. hyopneumoniae did not produce hydrogen peroxide, and therefore, the pathogenicity of this organism must involve a different mechanism. Alternative mechanisms for the production of pneumonia by M. hyopneumoniae are discussed

Seguridad de los documentos de archivo: estudio de caso del Archivo del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona

The exponential growth of digital content in organizations and the obligation to ensure the preservation of documents makes the need more evident for mechanisms to ensure its authenticity, integrity and security. A case of the Archives of the Barcelona Town Hall, following the pioneering experience of the Amsterdam Town Hall Archives, is presented. The Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) from Hitachi Data Systems was installed as a secure repository of digital documents. The project also included a review of current working patterns in an effort to establish procedures and best practices for digitization

Aislamiento de una chlamydia a partir de pulmones neumónicos de ovinos en México

Las enfermedades neumónicas de los ovinos en México representan uno de los problemas más graves de esta especie animal. En efecto, Pijoan (1977) encontró que el 13.3% de los ovinos sacrificados en el rastro de Ferrería presentaban lesiones neumónicas