Artificial Neural Network, Quantile and Semi-Log Regression Modelling of Mass Appraisal in Housing

We used a large sample of 188,652 properties, which represented 4.88% of the total housing stock in Catalonia from 1994 to 2013, to make a comparison between different real estate valuation methods based on artificial neural networks (ANNs), quantile regressions (QRs) and semi-log regressions (SLRs). A literature gap in regard to the comparison between ANN and QR modelling of hedonic prices in housing was identified, with this article being the first paper to include this comparison. Therefore, this study aimed to answer (1) whether QR valuation modelling of hedonic prices in the housing market is an alternative to ANNs, (2) whether it is confirmed that ANNs produce better results than SLRs when assessing housing in Catalonia, and (3) which of the three mass appraisal models should be used by Spanish banks to assess real estate. The results suggested that the ANNs and SLRs obtained similar and better performances than the QRs and that the SLRs performed better when the datasets were smaller. Therefore, (1) QRs were not found to be an alternative to ANNs, (2) it could not be confirmed whether ANNs performed better than SLRs when assessing properties in Catalonia and (3) whereas small and medium banks should use SLRs, large banks should use either SLRs or ANNs in real estate mass appraisal

Olfactory function in focal epilepsies: Understanding mesial temporal lobe epilepsy beyond the hippocampus

Several lines of research have linked olfactory regions with the pathophysiology of focal epilepsies. Among those regions, the piriform cortex represents the major part of the primary olfactory cortex. According to these data, we raised the hypothesis that in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy associated with hippocampal sclerosis exists an interictal dysfunction of olfactory processing that could be more significant compared to patients with extra‐hippocampal focal epilepsy and healthy controls. This could be the consequence of a dysfunctional epileptogenic network that extends beyond the hippocampus and affects other structures, including the piriform cortex. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated the olfactory function with the Sniffin' Sticks test in 32 patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy associated with hippocampal sclerosis, 30 patients with extra‐hippocampal focal epilepsy, and 22 healthy controls. Compared to the other study groups, patients with temporal lobe epilepsy due to hippocampal sclerosis showed a basal olfactory dysfunction characterized by an impairment in odor discrimination and odor identification. We also found that high seizure frequency had a strong correlation with the evaluated olfactory tasks. Our results are consistent with neuroimaging and neuropathological data that establish a link between olfactory regions and the pathophysiology of temporal lobe epileps

Added value of assimilating springtime Arctic sea ice concentration in summer-fall climate predictions

Prediction skill of continental climate in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) midlatitudes is generally limited throughout the year in dynamical seasonal forecast systems. Such limitations narrow the range of possible applications by different stakeholders. Improving the predictive capacity in these regions has been a challenging task. Sea ice is a central component of the Arctic climate system and a local source of climate predictability, yet its state is often not fully constrained in dynamical forecast systems. Using the EC-Earth3 climate model, we study the added value of assimilating observed Arctic sea ice concentration on the NH extratropical climate in retrospective forecasts of summer and fall, initialized every spring over 1992–2019. Predictions in the North Atlantic and Eurasia benefit from better initialization of sea ice in the Atlantic sector of the Arctic in a two-step mechanism. Initially, sea ice influences the central North Atlantic Ocean through an atmospheric bridge that develops in the first forecast weeks, subsequently leading to preserved skill in the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) throughout summer and early fall. Secondly, these long-lasting SST improvements provide better surface boundary conditions for the atmosphere and lead to more skillful predictions of circulation and surface climate in the Euro-Atlantic and Asian regions. In addition, our findings suggest that fully coupled ocean-atmosphere-sea ice models are likely necessary to study linkages between Arctic sea ice and midlatitudes, by better representing the interactions and feedbacks between the different components of the climate system.The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the authors. This work was funded by the European Union projects APPLICATE (Grant 727862), INTAROS (Grant 727890), and ESA/CMUG-CCI3. J C A N received financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades through a Juan de la Cierva personal grant (FJCI-2017-34027). J G-S was supported by the Spanish 'Ramón y Cajal' programme (RYC-2016-21181). All the data were downloaded from their original source, converted to NetCDF in a format designed for efficient analysis and quality checked at several levels. Etienne Tourigny, Pierre-Antoine Bretonnière, Margarida Samsó Cabré, Núria Pérez Zanón and An Chi Ho are acknowledged for their help with technical aspects. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the manuscript.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

How on Earth Did Spanish Banking Sell the Housing Stock?

The accumulation of properties by Spanish banks during the crisis of the first decade of the 21st century has definitely changed the housing market. An optimal house price valuation is useful to determine the bank’s actual financial situation. Furthermore, properties valued according to the market can be sold in a shorter span of time and at a better price. Using a sample of 24,781 properties and a simulation exercise, we aim to identify the decision criteria that Spanish banking used to decide which properties were going to be sold and at what price. The results of the comparison among four methods used to value real estate—artificial neural networks, semi log regressions, a combined model by means of weighted least squares regression, and quantile regressions—and the actual situation suggest that banking aimed to maximize the reversal of impairment losses, although this would mean capital losses, selling less properties, and decreasing their revenues. Therefore, the actual combined result was very detrimental to banking and, consequently, to the Spanish society because of its banking bailout

Radiothermic index for the grapevine cultivation : Mendoza (Argentina)

Uno de los índices utilizados para la caracterización agroclimática de las regiones para el cultivo de la vid es el Índice Heliotérmico. Debido a la actualización de los instrumentos de medición de las estaciones meteorológicas, el dato de heliofanía efectiva, necesario para el cálculo de dicho índice, no se encuentra fácilmente disponible y sólo puede obtenerse por estimación, mientras que sí es más factible conseguir datos medidos de Radiación. Por ello se ha desarrollado un Índice Radiotérmico, basado en la radiación, con similares fundamentos, pero con una previsible mayor aplicabilidad que el Índice Heliotérmico. Este nuevo índice permitirá ampliar la zonificación agroclimática para el cultivo de la vid de la República Argentina a zonas donde no se cuenta con información de heliofanía.The Heliothermic Index is one of de most used for agrometeorological characterization of the regions for grapevine cultivation. With the actualization of the agrometeorological stations the heliophany data, necessary to this index, is not easily accessible and only possible to obtain by estimation. On the other hand radiation data will be easy to get. So a Radiothermic Index has been developed, with similar foundations and a bigger future applicability than the Heliothermic Index. With this new index it will be possible to expand the Argentina Agroclimatical Characterization to those areas with no heliophany data.Fil: Torres, María Fernanda. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Departamento de Ingeniería AgrícolaFil: García, Pablo Camilo. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Departamento de Ingeniería AgrícolaFil: Pombo, Fernando Ángel. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Departamento de Ingeniería AgrícolaFil: Cicero, Aldo Roberto. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Departamento de Ingeniería Agrícol

Teoría carteras: aplicación con el oro y los activos numismáticos de oro

Los activos tangibles de colección, son aquellos activos que no están directamente relacionados con la evolución de los mercados financieros. Los activos numismáticos, son activos que pertenecen a los activos tangibles de colección. Estos se llevan estudiando en EEUU, de manera especial, desde la década de los ochenta (Salomon Jr. y Lennox, 1984; Berman y Schulman, 1986; Dickie, Delorme y Humphreys, 1994; Lombra, 2003; Brown 2005), aunque Sharpe ya hablaba de sus bondades en 1963. En España en la década de los noventa se realizaron importantes investigaciones (Coca, 1998; 2001). En este trabajo se realiza un trabajo de Teoría de Carteras con activos numismáticos de oro. El objetivo del trabajo es la construcción de diferentes carteras compuestas por activos numismáticos de oro y el propio metal precioso; con el fin de construir aquella cartera que mejor se adapte al inversor acorde a su perfil inversor y conocer cuál es la Cartera del Mercado. La muestra utilizada son los activos numismáticos de oro emitidos por España, EEUU, Gran Bretaña y Francia desde 1900 a 2008. El periodo de estudio es del 2003 al 2008. La metodología empleada es la Teoría de Carteras (Markowitz, 1952; 1959). Para ello construiremos la Frontera Eficiente y trazaremos la Línea del Mercado de Capitales o CML.Collectible Tangible Assets are those that directly they are not related to the evolution of the Financial Market. Numismatic Assets belongs to Collectible Tangible Assets. These assets have been studying in USA since the eighties (Salomon Jr. y Lennox, 1984; Berman y Schulman, 1986; Dickie, Delorme y Humphreys, 1994; Lombra, 2003; Brown 2005), although Sharpe had talked about his virtues in 1963. Important researches were made in Spain in the nineties (Coca 1998; 2001). In this paper we do a study of Portfolio Theory with Gold Numismatic Assets. Our objective is to build different Gold and Gold Numismatic Asset Portfolios. The purpose is being able to build the best portfolio for the different investors and to know The Market Portfolio. Research sample is composed by gold numismatic assets and the gold. Those assets have been issued by Spain, USA, Great Britain and France from 1900 to 2008. The research period is to 2003‐2008. We use Portfolio Theory methodology (Markowitz, 1952; 1959). For that we build the efficient frontier and we will trace the Capital Market Line, CML

Construcción de distribución GNU/LINUX con aplicaciones de software libre educativa, para fortalecer el desarrollo del programa de Tecnología en Informática de la Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios.

En la sede San Juan de Dios, no se empiezan a tiempo las clases que requieren aplicaciones de laboratorios, porque normalmente no se encuentran instalados los software necesarios para el desarrollo de asignaturas de programación., que afectan la normalidad académica, donde se pierden 3 a 4 semanas de clase activa y genera desinterés en la misma. Los investigadores, dadas las circunstancias, se ven en la necesidad de realizar la construcción de una Distribución LFS4 GNU/LINUXLiveCD, la cual se ha denominada “HerrerOS” que contenga las herramientas informáticas necesarias para una instalación ágil y eficiente de la aplicaciones para los diferentes espacios académicos de programación, que son utilizadas en las salas de computo

Evaluation of Feature Selection Techniques for Breast Cancer Risk Prediction

This study evaluates several feature ranking techniques together with some classifiers based on machine learning to identify relevant factors regarding the probability of contracting breast cancer and improve the performance of risk prediction models for breast cancer in a healthy population. The dataset with 919 cases and 946 controls comes from the MCC-Spain study and includes only environmental and genetic features. Breast cancer is a major public health problem. Our aim is to analyze which factors in the cancer risk prediction model are the most important for breast cancer prediction. Likewise, quantifying the stability of feature selection methods becomes essential before trying to gain insight into the data. This paper assesses several feature selection algorithms in terms of performance for a set of predictive models. Furthermore, their robustness is quantified to analyze both the similarity between the feature selection rankings and their own stability. The ranking provided by the SVM-RFE approach leads to the best performance in terms of the area under the ROC curve (AUC) metric. Top-47 ranked features obtained with this approach fed to the Logistic Regression classifier achieve an AUC = 0.616. This means an improvement of 5.8% in comparison with the full feature set. Furthermore, the SVM-RFE ranking technique turned out to be highly stable (as well as Random Forest), whereas relief and the wrapper approaches are quite unstable. This study demonstrates that the stability and performance of the model should be studied together as Random Forest and SVM-RFE turned out to be the most stable algorithms, but in terms of model performance SVM-RFE outperforms Random Forest.The study was partially funded by the “Accion Transversal del Cancer”, approved on the Spanish Ministry Council on the 11th October 2007, by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III-FEDER (PI08/1770, PI08/0533, PI08/1359, PS09/00773, PS09/01286, PS09/01903, PS09/02078, PS09/01662, PI11/01403, PI11/01889, PI11/00226, PI11/01810, PI11/02213, PI12/00488, PI12/00265, PI12/01270, PI12/00715, PI12/00150), by the Fundación Marqués de Valdecilla (API 10/09), by the ICGC International Cancer Genome Consortium CLL, by the Junta de Castilla y León (LE22A10-2), by the Consejería de Salud of the Junta de Andalucía (PI-0571), by the Conselleria de Sanitat of the Generalitat Valenciana (AP 061/10), by the Recercaixa (2010ACUP 00310), by the Regional Government of the Basque Country by European Commission grants FOOD-CT- 2006-036224- HIWATE, by the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) Scientific Foundation, by the The Catalan Government DURSI grant 2009SGR1489. Samples: Biological samples were stored at the Parc de Salut MAR Biobank (MARBiobanc; Barcelona) which is supported by Instituto de Salud Carlos III FEDER (RD09/0076/00036). Furthermore, at the Public Health Laboratory from Gipuzkoa and the Basque Biobank. Furthermore, sample collection was supported by the Xarxa de Bancs de Tumors de Catalunya sponsored by Pla Director d’Oncologia de Catalunya (XBTC). Biological samples were stored at the “Biobanco La Fe” which is supported by Instituto de Salud Carlos III (RD 09 0076/00021) and FISABIO biobanking, which is supported by Instituto de Salud Carlos III (RD09 0076/00058).S

Sistema de georeferenciación y monitoreo del estado vial en colombia para dispositivos móviles

Herein find some features and definitions relating to the operation and behavior of the components needed for the execution of a road system georeferencing Colombia. For this purpose use emerging technology based on the Android operating system [1] Google Company, taking advantage of the flexibility and adaptability of which have existing GPS tools suitable for mobile operating system. With the above is possible to have real-time traffic information in a simple and practical for the user to make the best decision at the time of travel to anywhere in the country.The application is called sistema de georeferenciación y monitoreamiento del estado vial en Colombia para dispositivos móviles, which makes use of a middleware that performs the task of interacting and communicating with the various applications, software, networking, hardware and operating systems, giving the user more and better information. In the course of project development phase to phase will see the  progress in applying the methodology guided by V3 Metrics, which provides a useful tool for the development of information systems applied to an adequate systematization of activities that are taking place within the framework of project development, thus ensuring that objectives are met in terms of quality, deadlines and proposed approach. En el presente documento se dan a conocer algunas características y definiciones correspondientes al comportamiento de los componentes que son necesarios para la ejecución y funcionamiento de un sistema de georeferenciación vial en Colombia.Para tal fin se empleó tecnología emergente basada en el sistema operativo Android [1] de la compañía Google, aprovechando la flexibilidad y adaptabilidad de las cuales gozan las actuales herramientas GPS adecuadas para este sistema operativo móvil. Con lo anterior es posible tener la información vial en tiempo real de manera sencilla y practica para que el usuario pueda tomar la mejor decisión al momento de desplazarse a cualquier punto del país.La aplicación se denomina sistema de georeferenciación y monitoreamiento del estado vial en Colombia para dispositivos móviles, la cual hace uso de un Middleware que realiza la tarea de interactuar y comunicarse con las diferentes aplicaciones, software, redes, hardware y sistemas operativos existentes, otorgando al usuario una mayor y mejor información.En el trascurso del desarrollo del proyecto fase a fase se verá la evolución de la aplicación guiada por la metodología Métrica V3, lo que proporciona un instrumento útil para el desarrollo de sistemas de información aplicado a una sistematización adecuada de las actividades que se estén llevando a cabo dentro del marco del desarrollo del proyecto, por lo tanto se asegura que se cumpla con los objetivos en términos de calidad, plazos y enfoque planteado

Epidemiology and risk factors for microtia in Colombia

Introducción y objetivos Microtia es una malformación mayor del pabellón auricular que presenta un espectro que va desde la disminución leve del tamaño del pabellón o una de sus partes hasta la ausencia total del pabellón (anotia). Su prevalencia varía según la región del mundo en la cual se evalúe. Analizamos diferentes variables maternas, neonatales y familiares, entre casos y controles, en comparación con las de la literatura existente. Métodos Recolectamos información del Estudio Colaborativo Latinoamericano de Malformaciones Congénitas registrada en 2001–2006; encontramos 27 casos de microtia aislada, también recabamos información de 103 controles. Analizamos la información mediante la prueba de la t de Student y la odds ratio (OR). Resultados La distribución de la microtia fue: 3 (11,1%) pacientes con microtia I, 19 (70,4%) con microtia II y 2 (7,4%) con microtia III. No había pacientes con anotia. La lateralidad más común fue el lado derecho. La proporción varones/mujeres fue de 1,7:1. Tener un peso al nacer≤2.500g genera una OR de 3,25 (intervalo de confianza del 95%, 1,11-9,58) para el desarrollo de microtia. Conclusiones La microtia puede tener relación directa o indirecta con la precipitación del inicio en el trabajo de parto. En futuros estudios los pacientes deberían tener un seguimiento a largo plazo para detectar posibles anomalías del espectro oculoauriculovertebral. También es importante realizar medidas antropométricas para aumentar la probabilidad de detección en casos de microtia de grado I e hipoplasia facial media y definir con mayor exactitud si la microtia aislada es la forma más leve del espectro oculoauriculovertebral.Q3Artículo original115-119Introduction and objectives Microtia is a major malformation of the auricle, comprising a clinical spectrum ranging from a slight reduction in the size of the auricle or one of its parts to the complete absence of the pinna (anotia). Its prevalence varies according to the region of the world it is evaluated in. We analyzed a range of maternal, neonatal, and familial variables in a case group and a control group, and compared them with the existing literature. Methods We collected information from the Latin-American Collaborative Study on Congenital Malformations (ECLAMC) gathered between 2001 and 2006, where we found 27 cases of isolated microtia; we also collected information from 103 control subjects. Data were analyzed using Student t test and odds ratio (OR). Results Microtia distribution was 3 (11.1%) patients with grade I microtia, 19 (70.4%) with grade II microtia, 2 (7.4%) with grade III microtia. We found no patients with anotia. Regarding laterality, the right side was involved more often. Male-to-female ratio was 1.7:1. Birth weight ≤2500g produces an OR of 3.25 (95% CI, 1.11-9.58) for the development of microtia. Conclusions Microtia may be directly or indirectly associated with the early onset of labour. Future studies should include long-term follow up of the patients in order to detect possible anomalies of the oculo-auriculo-vertebral spectrum. It is also important to take anthropometric measurements to increase the likelihood of detecting cases of grade I microtia and mid-face hypoplasia, and to define with greater accuracy whether isolated microtia is the mildest form of the oculo-auriculo-vertebral syndrome