Hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy properties: Environmental effects

Using N-body+hydro simulations we study relations between the local environments of galaxies on 0.5 Mpc scale and properties of the luminous components of galaxies. Our numerical simulations include effects of star formation and supernova feedback in different cosmological scenarios: the standard Cold Dark Matter model, the Broken Scale Invariance model (BSI), and a model with cosmological constant (LCDM). In this paper, we concentrate on the effects of environment on colors and morphologies of galaxies, on the star formation rate and on the relation between the total luminosity of a galaxy and its circular velocity. We demonstrate a statistically significant theoretical relationship between morphology and environment. In particular, there is a strong tendency for high-mass galaxies and for elliptical galaxies to form in denser environments, in agreement with observations. We find that in models with denser environments (CDM scenario) ~ 13 % of the galactic halos can be identified as field ellipticals, according to their colors. In simulations with less clustering (BSI and LCDM), the fraction of ellipticals is considerably lower (~ 2-3 %). The strong sensitivity of morphological type to environment is rather remarkable because our results are applicable to ``field'' galaxies and small groups. If all galaxies in our simulations are included, we find a statistically significant dependence of the galaxy luminosity - circular velocity relation on dark matter overdensity within spheres of radius 0.5 Mpc, for the CDM simulations. But if we remove ``elliptical'' galaxies from our analysis to mimic the Tully-Fisher relation for spirals, then no dependence is found in any model.Comment: 44 pages, 21 figures (17 included). Submitted to New Astronomy. GIFF color plots and the complete paper in Postscript (including color figures) can be found at http://astrosg.ft.uam.es/~gustavo/newas

Immirzi ambiguity, boosts and conformal frames for black holes

We analyse changes of the Immirzi parameter in loop quantum gravity and compare their consequences with those of Lorentz boosts and constant conformal transformations in black-hole physics. We show that the effective value deduced for the Planck length in local measurements of vacuum black holes by an asymptotic observer may depend on its conformal or Lorentz frame. This introduces an apparent ambiguity in the expression of the black-hole entropy which is analogous to that produced by the Immirzi parameter. For quantities involving a notion of energy, the similarity between the implications of the Immirzi ambiguity and a conformal scaling disappears, but the parallelism with boosts is maintained

Behavior Management Techniques Used by Teachers of Emotionally/behaviorally Disordered Students in Various Educational Settings

The purpose of this study was to delineate the differences between the types of behavioral management techniques used by teachers of students with emotional/behavioral disorders

SOCIAL MEDIA, ANXIETY, AND READING ACHIEVEMENT IN ELEMENTARY STUDENTS

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between perceived social media usage, academic achievement in reading, and anxiety. This study looked at a second grade classroom in ASFM consisting of 21 bilingual Mexican students, 11 boys and 10 girls. Perceived social media usage was measured using a survey, academic reading achievement was measured using Fountas and Pinell reading levels and anxiety was measured using the Children’s Test Anxiety Scale (CTAS) by Wren and Benson (2004). Each variable was then analyzed on its own through the use of descriptive statistics and bar graphs; then, each dependent variable was compared against the independent variable using a t-test and scatter-plot. This study found that there is a positive moderate correlation between perceived social media usage and academic achievement in reading; as perceived social media usage increases so does the likelihood of higher reading scores. Additionally this study found a weak positive correlation between perceived social media usage and test anxiety scores; as perceived social media usage increases the likelihood of higher test anxiety scores increases as well

Application of data augmentation techniques towards metabolomics

Niemann–Pick Class 1 (NPC1) disease is a rare and debilitating neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disease (LSD). Metabolomics datasets of NPC1 patients available to perform this type of analysis are often limited in the number of samples and severely unbalanced. In order to improve the predictive capability and identify new biomarkers in an NPC1 disease urinary dataset, data augmentation (DA) techniques based on computational intelligence have been employed to create synthetic samples, i.e. the addition of noise, oversampling techniques and conditional generative adversarial networks. These techniques have been used to evaluate their predictive capacities on a set of urine samples donated by 13 untreated NPC1 disease and 47 heterozygous (parental) carrier control participants. Results on the prediction have also been obtained using different machine learning classification models and the partial least squares techniques. These results provide strong evidence for the ability of DA techniques to generate good quality synthetic data. Results acquired show increases in sensitivity of 20%–50%, an F1 score of 6%–30%, and a predictive capacity of 0.3 (out of 1). Additionally, more conventional forms of multivariate data analysis have been employed. These have allowed the detection of unusual urinary metabolite profiles, and the identification of biomarkers through the use of synthetically augmented datasets. Results indicate that urinary branched-chain amino acids such as valine, 3-aminoisobutyrate and quinolinate, may be employable as valuable biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognostic monitoring of NPC1 diseaseThe authors acknowledge the support from MINECO (Spain) through grants TIN2017-88728-C2-1-R and PID2020-116898RB-I00 (MICINN), from Universidad de Málaga y Junta de Andalucía through grant UMA20-FEDERJA-045, and from Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Málaga – IBIMA (all including FEDER funds). Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA

More than two decades of palliative care in Costa Rica

Este artículo presenta una síntesis sobre el desarrollo de los cuidados paliativos en Costa Rica, que se articulan por medio del Consejo Nacional de Cuidados Paliativos, institución ligada al Ministerio de Salud Pública. Se concluye que es esencial la coordinación de distintos organismos que trabajan por el consenso en la atención mediante el establecimiento de normas, protocolos y guías clínicas orientadores con lineamientos claros a los profesionales de salud en la atención al final de la vida.This article presents a synthesis on the development of palliative care in Costa Rica, articulated through the National Council for Palliative Care, an institution linked to the Ministry of Public Health. We conclude that the coordination among different organisms that work on behalf of consensus in care is essential to establish norms, protocols, and clinical guidelines for health professionals in end-of-life care

An Intelligent traffic network optimisation by use of Bayesian inference methods to combat air pollution

CCI Group has contributed to the researchTraffic flow related air pollution is one of the major problems in urban areas, and is often difficult to avoid it if the time sequenced dynamic pollution and traffic parameters are not identified and modelled efficiently. In our introduced work here, an artificial intelligence technique such as Bayesian networks are used for a robust traffic data analysis and modelling. The most common challenge in traditional data analysis is a lack of capability of unveiling the hidden links between the distant data attributes (e.g. pollution sources, dynamic traffic parameters, geographic location characteristics, etc.), whereas some subtle effects of these parameters or events may play an important role in pollution on a long term basis