Diseccionando la satisfacción de los usuarios con los servicios de atención hospitalaria del sistema sanitario público andaluz

El objetivo es analizar de qué manera infl uye en la satisfacción general de los usuarios de los servicios hospitalarios de Andalucía la satisfacción con los aspectos parciales del servicio. Se utilizaron los datos de la Encuesta a usuarios de los servicios de atención hospitalaria del Servicio Andaluz de Salud. Primero se creó un indicador resumen, a partir de tres variables que medían la satisfacción general, a través de un análisis de componentes principales categóricos. Posteriormente se redujo de 18 indicadores sobre satisfacción parcial a 4 dimensiones (acto médico, acto sanitario, instalaciones y organización) por medio de un análisis factorial. Finalmente, aplicando un análisis de regresión lineal, se analizó la relación entre la satisfacción global con las 4 dimensiones y variables sociodemográfi cas. El R2 fue de 0,446. Se calculó los índices de Pratt, lo que permitió observar la infl uencia que ejercían las variables independientes sobre la satisfacción global. La variable más relevante fue el acto médico con una importancia del 49,64%. El resto de dimensiones tenían un menor peso y las variables sociodemográfi cas apenas ejercían infl uencia. Finalmente se compararon estos resultados con los obtenidos en un estudio similar realizado en el servicio de atención primaria.Peer Reviewe

Efficient plot-based floristic assessment of tropical forests

The tropical flora remains chronically understudied and the lack of floristic understanding hampers ecological research and its application for large-scale conservation planning. Given scarce resources and the scale of the challenge there is a need to maximize the efficiency of both sampling strategies and sampling units, yet there is little information on the relative efficiency of different approaches to floristic assessment in tropical forests. This paper is the first attempt to address this gap. We repeatedly sampled forests in two regions of Amazonia using the two most widely used plot-based protocols of floristic sampling, and compared their performance in terms of the quantity of floristic knowledge and ecological insight gained scaled to the field effort required. Specifically, the methods are assessed first in terms of the number of person-days required to complete each sample (‘effort’), secondly by the total gain in the quantity of floristic information that each unit of effort provides (‘crude inventory efficiency’), and thirdly in terms of the floristic information gained as a proportion of the target species pool (‘proportional inventory efficiency’). Finally, we compare the methods in terms of their efficiency in identifying different ecological patterns within the data (‘ecological efficiency’) while controlling for effort. There are large and consistent differences in the performance of the two methods. The disparity is maintained even after accounting for regional and site-level variation in forest species richness, tree density and the number of field assistants. We interpret our results in the context of selecting the appropriate method for particular research purposes

Contact transmission of influenza virus between ferrets imposes a looser bottleneck than respiratory droplet transmission allowing propagation of antiviral resistance

Influenza viruses cause annual seasonal epidemics and occasional pandemics. It is important to elucidate the stringency of bottlenecks during transmission to shed light on mechanisms that underlie the evolution and propagation of antigenic drift, host range switching or drug resistance. The virus spreads between people by different routes, including through the air in droplets and aerosols, and by direct contact. By housing ferrets under different conditions, it is possible to mimic various routes of transmission. Here, we inoculated donor animals with a mixture of two viruses whose genomes differed by one or two reverse engineered synonymous mutations, and measured the transmission of the mixture to exposed sentinel animals. Transmission through the air imposed a tight bottleneck since most recipient animals became infected by only one virus. In contrast, a direct contact transmission chain propagated a mixture of viruses suggesting the dose transferred by this route was higher. From animals with a mixed infection of viruses that were resistant and sensitive to the antiviral drug oseltamivir, resistance was propagated through contact transmission but not by air. These data imply that transmission events with a looser bottleneck can propagate minority variants and may be an important route for influenza evolution

Membrane Bioreactor and Promising Application for Textile Industry in Vietnam

Abstract A pilot-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR) was developed in order to run two membrane modules in parallel for the treatment of model textile wastewater (MTDW). Two independently operated commercially available ultrafiltration membrane modules called UP150 from Microdyn-Nadir where tested in the same activated sludge tank over a period of 70 days for their removal efficiency of the MTDW. In general the results of both membrane modules are in very good agreement. The water permeability ranged between 20 – 50 L/(m 2 .h.bar). Typically, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency indicated good biodegradation performance above 95%. The nitrification rate depended on the food to microorganism (F/M) ratio i.e. below 0.2 kg COD/(kg MLSS.d) the system showed complete nitrification. However, the color rejection for the model dyes was only around 20% to 60% what can be attributed to the low biodegradability of these chemicals. The next step is to run the MBR with novel nanostructured membranes in parallel with the commercially available membrane to compare their performances. This study contributes to sustainable development in the textile industry by improving water quality of treated textile wastewater what helps to reduce fresh water consumption and pollutant discharge

Assessment of data fusion oriented on data mining approaches to enhance precision agriculture practices aimed at increase of Durum Wheat (Triticum turgidum L. var. durum) yield

In 2050, world population will reach a total of 9 billion inhabitants and their food demand have to be satisfied. Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. var. durum) is one of the most important food crop and its consumption is increasing worldwide. Productivity growth in agriculture and profitable returns are strongly influenced by investment in research and development, where Precision Agriculture (PA) represents an innovative way to manage farms by introducing the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into the production process. It is known that farms activities produce large amounts of data. Today ICT allows, with electronic and software systems, to collect and transfer automatically these data, thus increasing yields and profits. In this direction significant data are processed from agricultural production, and retrieved to extract useful information important to increase the knowledge base. Data from multiple data sources can be processed by a Data Fusion (DF) approach able to combine multiple data sources into an unique database system. Raw data are transformed into useful information, thus DF improves pattern recognition, analysis of growth factors, and relationship between crops and environments. Data Fusion is synonym of Data Integration, Sensor Fusion, and Image Fusion. By means of Data Mining (DM) it is possible to extract useful information from data of the production processes thus providing new outputs concerning product quality and product “health status”. The following literature take into account the DF and DM techniques applied to Precision Agriculture (PA) and to cultivation inputs (water, nitrogen, etc.) management.  We report also last advances of DF and DM in modern agriculture and in precision durum wheat production

Novel sulfonylurea derivatives as H3 receptor antagonists. Preliminary SAR studies

The combination of antagonism at histamine H3 receptor and the stimulation of insulin secretion have been proposed as an approach to new dual therapeutic agents for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus associated with obesity. We have designed and synthesized a new series of non-imidazole derivatives, based on a basic amine ring connected through an alkyl spacer of variable length to a phenoxysulfonylurea moiety. These compounds were initially evaluated for histamine H3 receptor binding affinities, suggesting that a propoxy chain linker between the amine and the core ring could be essential for optimal binding affinity. Compound 56, 1-(naphthalen-1-yl)-3-[(p-(3-pyrrolidin-1-ylpropoxy)benzene)]sulfonylurea exhibited the best H3 antagonism affinity. However, since all these derivatives failed to block KATP channels, the link of these two related moieties should not be considered a good pharmacophore for obtaining new dual H3 antagonists with insulinotropic activity, suggesting the necessity to propose a new chemical hybrid prototype

Factores asociados con casos esporádicos de salmonelosis en niños de 1 a 7 años. Estudio de casos y controles

ObjetivoEl conocimiento de los factores de riesgo de la salmonelosis proviene en gran parte de los estudios de brotes de toxiinfección alimentaria, pero es menos conocida la epidemiología de los casos esporádicos. Sin embargo, muchos de los casos atendidos en el sistema sanitario son esporádicos, especialmente niños. Este estudio pretende aportar conocimientos sobre algunos de los determinantes de esos casos.MétodosEstudio de casos y controles (113 niños) de hospital y atención primaria. Casos incidentes de diarrea en niños de 1 a 7 años ocurridos entre diciembre de 1994 y diciembre de 1995 y con coprocultivo positivo a Salmonella. Controles de igual procedencia pero con coprocultivo positivo a Campylobacter o virus. Se estudian factores alimentarios, del entorno de los casos y antecedentes próximos. Se calculan las Odds Ratio (OR) ajustadas por los factores relacionados, edad, sexo y época del año mediante regresión logística.ResultadosEl consumo de carne picada del comercio durante los tres días previos a la diarrea, OR=4,07 (1,20–13,8) y OR=5,63 (1,34–23,6) para cada grupo control, la posesión de animales domésticos, OR=8,27 (1,96–34,9) y la toma de antibióticos en la semana previa a la diarrea, OR=4,75 (0,84–27,0) estuvieron epidemiológicamente asociados con la enfermedad.ConclusionesLa epidemiología de los casos esporádicos de salmonelosis en niños de esta edad parece diferir de la de los típicamente asociados a brotes de infección alimentaria, y es más compleja. El consumo de carne picada en el comercio, la toma previa de antibióticos y la posesión de animales domésticos pueden suponer un riesgo para la salmonelosis infantil y habrían de ser considerados en futuros estudios sobre esta materia.BackgroundKnowledge about salmonellosis risk factors mainly comes from foodborne outbreaks, and we know little about sporadic cases epidemiology. However most of the cases are sporadic, specially children. This study aims to find out some of determinants of these cases.MethodsA case-control study with incident cases and controls from the same base population (laboratory diagnosed cases). Cases were children 1–7 years old, afected by diarrohea with culture stools positive to Salmonella between decembre 1994 and decembre 1995. Controls from the same source, but positive culture to Campylobacter or viruses. We study food and other environmental risk factors. Odds ratio (OR) are calculated adjusted for age, sex, and year period (cool and cold) by logistic regression.ResultsEating minced meat during three days before symptoms, OR 4,07 (1.20–13.8) and OR 5.63 (1.34–23.6); pets, OR 8.27 (1.96–34.9), and antibiotics the week before symptoms, OR 4.75 (0.84–27.0) were epidemiologicaly associated with salmonelosis diarrohea.ConclusionsEpidemiology of salmonelosis sporadic cases in children seems diferent to the foodborne associated cases and is more complex. Minced meat tree days before symptoms, antibiotics the week before symptoms, and pets could be a risk for this kind of cases. Future studies must also take account of this factors

Building hazard maps of extreme daily rainy events from PDF ensemble, via REA method, on Senegal River Basin

The Sudano-Sahelian zone of West Africa, one of the poorest of the Earth, is characterized by high rainfall variability and rapid population growth. In this region, heavy storm events frequently cause extensive damage. Nonetheless, the projections for change in extreme rainfall values have shown a great divergence between Regional Climate Models (RCM), increasing the forecast uncertainty. Novel methodologies should be applied, taking into account both the variability provided by different RCMs, as well as the non-stationary nature of time series for the building of hazard maps of extreme rainfall events. The present work focuses on the probability density functions (PDFs)-based evaluation and a simple quantitative measure of how well each RCM considered can capture the observed annual maximum daily rainfall (AMDR) series on the Senegal River basin. Since meaningful trends have been detected in historical rainfall time series for the region, non-stationary probabilistic models were used to fit the PDF parameters to the AMDR time series. In the development of PDF ensemble by bootstrapping techniques, Reliability Ensemble Averaging (REA) maps were applied to score the RCMs. The REA factors were computed using a metric to evaluate the agreement between observed -or best estimated- PDFs, and that simulated with each RCM. The assessment of plausible regional trends associated to the return period, from the hazard maps of AMDR, showed a general rise, owing to an increase in the mean and the variability of extreme precipitation. These spatial-temporal distributions could be considered by Organization for the Development of the Senegal River (Organisation pour la mise en valeur du fleuve Sénégal, OMVS), in such a way as to reach a better balance between mitigation and adaptation

New quinoxaline derivatives as potential MT₁ and MT₂ receptor ligands.

Ever since the idea arose that melatonin might promote sleep and resynchronize circadian rhythms, many research groups have centered their efforts on obtaining new melatonin receptor ligands whose pharmacophores include an aliphatic chain of variable length united to an N-alkylamide and a methoxy group (or a bioisostere), linked to a central ring. Substitution of the indole ring found in melatonin with a naphthalene or quinoline ring leads to compounds of similar affinity. The next step in this structural approximation is to introduce a quinoxaline ring (a bioisostere of the quinoline and naphthalene rings) as the central nucleus of future melatoninergic ligand

Cutting tool tracking and recognition based on infrared and visual imaging systems using principal component analysis (PCA) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) combined with neural networks

The implementation of computerised condition monitoring systems for the detection cutting tools’ correct installation and fault diagnosis is of a high importance in modern manufacturing industries. The primary function of a condition monitoring system is to check the existence of the tool before starting any machining process and ensure its health during operation. The aim of this study is to assess the detection of the existence of the tool in the spindle and its health (i.e. normal or broken) using infrared and vision systems as a non-contact methodology. The application of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) combined with neural networks are investigated using both types of data in order to establish an effective and reliable novel software program for tool tracking and health recognition. Infrared and visual cameras are used to locate and track the cutting tool during the machining process using a suitable analysis and image processing algorithms. The capabilities of PCA and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) combined with neural networks are investigated in recognising the tool’s condition by comparing the characteristics of the tool to those of known conditions in the training set. The experimental results have shown high performance when using the infrared data in comparison to visual images for the selected image and signal processing algorithms