How would patients with psychosis like to be in contact with a volunteer: Face-to-face or digitally?

IntroductionVolunteer befriending can be used to address social isolation in patients with psychosis. Traditionally this involves face-to-face encounters between a volunteer and a patient, but modern digital technology also makes it possible to have these interactions remotely. This study aimed to explore the views and interests of patients with psychosis about different formats of volunteering, face-to-face or digitally.MethodsA survey was conducted with patients with psychotic disorders in community mental health teams in London. Questions covered socio-demographic characteristics, quality of life, loneliness, views on the different formats of volunteering and types of volunteers, and their interest in getting volunteering support, face-to-face or digitally. Binary logistic regressions were used to investigate potential predictors of interest in getting volunteering support face-to-face or digitally.ResultsA total of 151 patients with psychotic disorders were included in this study. More than half of the patients (n = 87, 57.6%) had not heard about these volunteering programs. Many were interested in getting face-to-face (n = 87, 57.6%) and digital (n = 56, 37.1%) volunteering. For the face-to-face encounters, most preferred them to be weekly (n = 36, 41.4%), for one-hour (n = 32, 36.8%), and with an open-ended relationship (n = 45, 51.7%). For the digital contacts, most preferred them to be weekly (n = 17, 30.9%) and through text messages (n = 26, 46.4%). A minority of patients (n = 20, 13.2%) did not use digital technology. Patients with lower quality of life were significantly more likely to prefer face-to-face volunteering (p ConclusionsThe variability in patients' interests suggests that different formats of volunteer support should be offered. Digital volunteering may become more important in the future, since many younger patients are interested in it

A multilayer service data acquisition and operation system for oceanographic ships and instrumentation networks

A new Data Acquisition and Operation System for Oceanographic ships and Instrumentation Networks has been developed by the Marine Technology Unit of the Spanish Research Vessels for their networked remote acquisition platforms. The new system built over LABVIR project background follows a Service Oriented Architecture to allow expandable access to acquired data in real time and to archived data. Several Data layers are implemented to allow data access from the more common tools and formats used in marine sciences.Peer Reviewe

Rainwater harvesting systems reduce detergent use

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Purpose: Due to population growth, urban water demand is expected to increase significantly, as well as the environmental and economic costs required to supply it. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems can play a key role in helping cities meet part of their water demand as an alternative to conventional water abstraction and treatment. This paper presents an environmental and economic analysis of RWH systems providing households with water for laundry purposes in a life cycle thinking perspective. Conclusions: LCA and LCC present better results for high-density scenarios. Overall, avoided environmental and economic impacts from detergent reduction clearly surpass environmental impacts (in all categories except terrestrial acidification) and economic cost of the RWHsystem in most cases (except two scenarios). Another important finding is that 80%of the savings are achieved by minimizing detergent and fabric softener by using soft rainwater; and the remaining 20% comes from replacing the use of tap water

Measurement invariance of the Spanish Launay–Slade Hallucinations Scale-Extended version between putatively healthy controls and people diagnosed with a mental disorder

Objectives: The current study aimed at evaluating the reliability, convergent and divergent validity, and factor structure of the Spanish Launay–Slade Hallucinations Scale-Extended version (LSHS-E) in people with mental disorders and healthy controls. Methods: Four hundred and twenty-two individuals completed the Spanish LSHS-E and the Spanish Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences. The convergent and divergent validity of the LSHS-E was assessed with the three dimensions of the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (positive, negative, and depressive dimensions) in healthy controls and people with a mental disorder. Factor structure of the LSHS-E was assessed using confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance. Results: The LSHS-E had a good reliability in healthy controls and people with a mental disorder (Cronbach's = 0.83 and 0.91, respectively). The LSHS-E was more strongly associated with positive psychotic-like experiences than with depressive and negative symptoms. Four factors were found: (a) “intrusive thoughts”; (b) “vivid daydreams”; (c) “multisensory hallucination-like experiences”; and (d) “auditory–visual hallucination-like experiences” that were invariant between the group of healthy controls and people with a mental disorder. Conclusion: The Spanish version of the LSHS-E possesses adequate psychometric properties, and the confirmatory factor analysis findings provide further support for the multidimensionality of proneness to hallucination in clinical and nonclinical samples

Drug-plant interactions in oncology: the challenge for outpatients

International audienc

A multilayer service data acquisition and operation system for oceanographic ships and instrumentation networks

A new Data Acquisition and Operation System for Oceanographic ships and Instrumentation Networks has been developed by the Marine Technology Unit of the Spanish Research Vessels for their networked remote acquisition platforms. The new system built over LABVIR project background follows a Service Oriented Architecture to allow expandable access to acquired data in real time and to archived data. Several Data layers are implemented to allow data access from the more common tools and formats used in marine sciences