Spanish Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Validation of Neck Bournemouth Questionnaire (NBQ) for Neck Pain Patients

Background: Neck pain is highly prevalent and one of the most common musculoskeletal conditions. Instruments that measure the factors involved in neck pain accurately are needed for clinical assessment. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are reliable, cost-effective, and specific tools for the assessment of musculoskeletal problems at different moments. The Neck Bournemouth Questionnaire (NBQ) assesses pain, function, disability, and psychological and social variables in patients with cervical pathologies. The aim of this study was to perform an adaptation and validation into Spanish of the NBQ (NBQ-Sp). Methods: A cross-sectional, observational study was carried out through translation, adaptation, and validation. A total of 129 patients with neck pain, of Spanish nationality, and over 18 years of age were included. Results: The NBQ-Sp showed excellent internal consistency, with Cronbach’s of 0.897, test–retest reliability with interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.866, and standard error of measurement (SEM) and minimum detectable change (MDC) values were 1.302 and 3.038, respectively. A Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value of 0.857 was obtained, and Bartlett’s test yielded p < 0.001, finding one factor in the factor analysis. Conclusion: The NBQ-Sp has proven to be a valid and reliable tool for clinicians and researchers to measure neck pain in the Spanish population.Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (FPU17/01109

Las tasas de mortalidad para la Enfermedad de Parkinson están incrementando en Espana. ˜ Un análisis Edad-Periodo-Cohorte y Joinpoints en las tasas de mortalidad desde 1981 a 2020

Background: Mortality in Parkinson’s disease is increasing worldwide, but Spanish data need further study. Objective: To analyse the mortality trends of Parkinson’s disease in Spain between 1981 and 2020. Methods: This observational retrospective study assessed the Parkinson’s disease mortality data from 1981 to 2020 collected from the National Statistics Institute of Spain. Agestandardised mortality rates were analysed by age and sex groups, detecting significant mortality trends through a joinpoint analysis. Age-period-cohort effect and potential years of life lost analyses were conducted. The European standard population of 2013 was considered for the analyses. Results: A total of 88 034 deaths were assessed. The overall age-standardised mortality rate rose throughout the period from 3.67 to 8.57 per 100 000 inhabitants. Mortality rates in men were higher than in women, 11.63 versus 6.57 deaths per 100 000 inhabitants. The sex ratio showed an increase in premature mortality in men during 2020. The overall joinpoint analysis recorded a rise in mortality, primarily since the 20th century, mainly in male and older groups, that matched with a period effect. The age effect was detected, confirming higher mortality at an older age. The analysis of potential years of life lost detected a growth in this rate, changing from 0.66 in 1981 to 1.06 in 2020. Conclusions: Mortality data for Parkinson’s disease in Spain rose significantly in forty years. Mortality rate was higher in the male and age group above 75 years of age. The sex ratio showed premature mortality in men in 2020, which will need further study.Introducción: La mortalidad de la Enfermedad de Parkinson está incrementando a nivel mundial, pero los datos espanoles ˜ necesitan ser estudiados en profundidad. Objetivo: Analizar las tendencias de mortalidad de la Enfermedad de Parkinson en Espana˜ entre 1981 y 2020. Métodos: Este estudio observacional retrospectivo analizó los datos de mortalidad de la Enfermedad de Parkinson extraídos desde 1981 a 2020 del Instituto Nacional de Estadística de Espana. ˜ Las tasas de mortalidad estandarizada por edad fueron analizadas por grupos de edad y sexo, detectando cambios de tendencia de mortalidad significativos mediate un análisis de joinpoint. Se llevaron a cabo análisis de Edad-Periodo-Cohorte y anos ˜ potenciales de vida perdidos. La población estándar europea fue considerada para el análisis. Resultados: Un total de 88.034 defunciones fueron examinadas. La tasa global de mortalidad estandarizada por edad creció a lo largo del periodo estudiado desde 3,67 a 8,47 por cada 100.000 habitantes. Las tasas de mortalidad fueron mayores en hombre que en mujeres, 11,63 frente a 6,57 fallecimientos por cada 100.000 habitantes. La proporción de sexo mostró un incremento en la mortalidad prematura en hombre durante 2020. El análisis de joinpoint global reportó un aumento de mortalidad, principalmente desde el siglo XX, siendo más notable en hombre y grupos de edad avanzada, que coincidió con un efecto periodo. Se detectó un efecto de edad confirmando una mayor mortalidad a edad más edad avanza. El análisis de anos ˜ potenciales de vida perdidos detectó un crecimiento en esta tasa, cambiando de un 0,66 en 1981 a 1,06 en 2020. Conclusiones: Los datos de mortalidad para la Enfermedad de Parkinson en Espana˜ ha incrementado significativamente durante cuarenta anos. ˜ La tasa de mortalidad fue mayor en hombre y en grupos de edad mayores de 75 anos ˜ de edad. La proporción de sexo mostró una mortalidad prematura en hombres en 2020, que necesitará ser estudiado en mayor profundidad

Offloading strategies for Stencil kernels on the KNC Xeon Phi architecture: Accuracy versus performance

[EN] The ever-increasing computational requirements of HPC and service provider applications are becoming a great challenge for hardware and software designers. These requirements are reaching levels where the isolated development on either computational field is not enough to deal with such challenge. A holistic view of the computational thinking is therefore the only way to success in real scenarios. However, this is not a trivial task as it requires, among others, of hardware¿software codesign. In the hardware side, most high-throughput computers are designed aiming for heterogeneity, where accelerators (e.g. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), etc.) are connected through high-bandwidth bus, such as PCI-Express, to the host CPUs. Applications, either via programmers, compilers, or runtime, should orchestrate data movement, synchronization, and so on among devices with different compute and memory capabilities. This increases the programming complexity and it may reduce the overall application performance. This article evaluates different offloading strategies to leverage heterogeneous systems, based on several cards with the firstgeneration Xeon Phi coprocessors (Knights Corner). We use a 11-point 3-D Stencil kernel that models heat dissipation as a case study. Our results reveal substantial performance improvements when using several accelerator cards. Additionally, we show that computing of an approximate result by reducing the communication overhead can yield 23% performance gains for double-precision data sets.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is jointly supported by the Fundacion Seneca (Agencia Regional de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Region de Murcia) under grants 15290/PI/2010 and 18946/JLI/13 and by the Spanish MINECO, as well as European Commission FEDER funds, under grants TIN2015-66972-C5-3-R and TIN2016-78799-P (AEI/ FEDER, UE). MH was supported by a research grant from the PRODEP under the Professional Development Program for Teachers (UAGro-197) MéxicoHernández, M.; Cebrián, JM.; Cecilia-Canales, JM.; García, JM. (2020). Offloading strategies for Stencil kernels on the KNC Xeon Phi architecture: Accuracy versus performance. International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications. 34(2):199-297. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094342017738352S199297342Michael Brown, W., Carrillo, J.-M. Y., Gavhane, N., Thakkar, F. M., & Plimpton, S. J. (2015). Optimizing legacy molecular dynamics software with directive-based offload. Computer Physics Communications, 195, 95-101. doi:10.1016/j.cpc.2015.05.004Esmaeilzadeh, H., Blem, E., St. Amant, R., Sankaralingam, K., & Burger, D. (2012). Power Limitations and Dark Silicon Challenge the Future of Multicore. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 30(3), 1-27. doi:10.1145/2324876.2324879Feng, L. (2015). Data Transfer Using the Intel COI Library. High Performance Parallelism Pearls, 341-348. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-802118-7.00020-0Jeffers, J., & Reinders, J. (2013). Offload. Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor High Performance Programming, 189-241. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-410414-3.00007-4Rahman, R. (2013). Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor Architecture and Tools. doi:10.1007/978-1-4302-5927-5Reinders J, Jeffers J (2014) High Performance Parallelism Pearls, Multicore and Many-core Programming Approaches (Characterization and Auto-tuning of 3DFD). Morgan Kaufmann, pp. 377–396.Shareef, B., de Doncker, E., & Kapenga, J. (2015). Monte Carlo simulations on Intel Xeon Phi: Offload and native mode. 2015 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC). doi:10.1109/hpec.2015.7322456Ujaldón, M. (2016). CUDA Achievements and GPU Challenges Ahead. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 207-217. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-41778-3_20Wang, E., Zhang, Q., Shen, B., Zhang, G., Lu, X., Wu, Q., & Wang, Y. (2014). High-Performance Computing on the Intel® Xeon Phi™. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-06486-4Wende, F., Klemm, M., Steinke, T., & Reinefeld, A. (2015). Concurrent Kernel Offloading. High Performance Parallelism Pearls, 201-223. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-802118-7.00012-

Temperature-independent quantum logic for molecular spectroscopy

We propose a fast and non-destructive spectroscopic method for single molecular ions that implements quantum logic schemes between an atomic ion and the molecular ion of interest. Our proposal relies on a hybrid coherent manipulation of the two-ion system, using optical or magnetic forces depending on the types of molecular levels to be addressed (Zeeman, rotational, vibrational or electronic degrees of freedom). The method is especially suited for the non-destructive precision spectroscopy of single molecular ions, and sets a starting point for new hybrid quantum computation schemes that combine molecular and atomic ions, covering the measurement and entangling steps.Comment: v3. Substantially enlarged manuscript with details of derivations and calculations in two appendices. To appear in PR

Exercise for People with Acquired Brain Injury: An ICF Perspective.

Exercise is an important element in the process of recovery from an acquired brain injury (ABI). However, specific guidance for exercise prescription and interventions in this population are missed. The aim of this study was to establish the key parameters to design and implement exercise programs based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) domains. A panel of experts that consisted of 13 professionals from neuro-rehabilitation centers evaluated the key parameters of this original proposal. The Heinemann methodology was used for all qualitative analyses. Additionally, Cronbach’s alpha was applied to the statistical analyses. According to the results, Cronbach’s alpha (0.97) indicated excellent internal consistency, and the experts perceptions ratified the proposed criteria to develop exercise programs for people with ABI. The proposed key parameters for the development of exercise programs for people with ABI based in ICF domains (body functions, activity—participation and environmental factors) bring a new, solid, and innovative tool for methodological design of these programs in sub-acute and chronic rehabilitation settings.pre-print1011 K

Science with Neutrino Telescopes in Spain

The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding support from the following Spanish programs: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion, Investigacion y Universidades (MCIU): Programa Estatal de Generacion de Conocimiento (refs. PGC2018-096663-B-C41, -A-C42, -B-C43, -B-C44) (MCIU/FEDER); Generalitat Valenciana: Prometeo (PROMETEO/2020/019) and GenT (refs. CIDEGENT/2018/034, /2020/049, /2021/023); Junta de Andalucia (ref. A-FQM-053-UGR18).The primary scientific goal of neutrino telescopes is the detection and study of cosmic neutrino signals. However, the range of physics topics that these instruments can tackle is exceedingly wide and diverse. Neutrinos coming from outside the Earth, in association with othermessengers, can contribute to clarify the question of the mechanisms that power the astrophysical accelerators which are known to exist from the observation of high-energy cosmic and gamma rays. Cosmic neutrinos can also be used to bring relevant information about the nature of dark matter, to study the intrinsic properties of neutrinos and to look for physics beyond the Standard Model. Likewise, atmospheric neutrinos can be used to study an ample variety of particle physics issues, such as neutrino oscillation phenomena, the determination of the neutrino mass ordering, non-standard neutrino interactions, neutrino decays and a diversity of other physics topics. In this article, we review a selected number of these topics, chosen on the basis of their scientific relevance and the involvement in their study of the Spanish physics community working in the KM3NeT and ANTARES neutrino telescopes.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion, Investigacion y Universidades (MCIU) PGC2018-096663-B-C41 A-C42 B-C43 B-C44MCIU/FEDERGeneralitat Valenciana PROMETEO/2020/019GenT CIDEGENT/2018/034 2020/049 2021/023Junta de Andalucia A-FQM-053-UGR1

Fractional RC and LC Electrical Circuits

AbstractIn this paper we propose a fractional differential equation for the electrical RC and LC circuit in terms of the fractional time derivatives of the Caputo type. The order of the derivative being considered is 0<γ<1. To keep the dimensionality of the physical parameters R, L, C the new parameter a is introduced. This parameter characterizes the existence of fractional structures in the system. A relation between the fractional order time derivative γ and the new parameter σ is found. The numeric Laplace transform method was used for the simulation of the equations results. The results show that the fractional differential equations generalize the behavior of the charge, voltage and current depending of the values of γ. The classical cases are recovered by taking the limit when γ=1. An analysis in the frequency domain of an RC circuit shows the application and use of fractional order differential equations

La hidroxiapatita asociada al sulfato cálcico como material de substitución ósea. Aspectos biológicos.

La cirugía ortopédica y máxilo-facial necesitan realizar en muchas ocasiones resecciones masivas de tejido óseo. Esto ha hecho que se haya propuesto la utilización de materiales inertes como substitutos óseos, gracias a la habilidad que tienen de permitir la regeneración del hueso, tanto en el campo de la medicina como en el de la odontología. Nuestro trabajo tiene por objetivo estudiar un biomaterial compuesto de hidroxiapatita y sulfato cálcico como material de substitución ósea en forma de cilindros. Se han intervenido 75 animales de experimentación (conejo Albino de Nueva Zelanda), divididos en tres grupos, cada uno de ellos compuesto por 25 animales. En el grupo I o control, los animales fueron intervenidos quirúrgicamente realizándoseles una cavidad a nivel metafisodiafisario en el fémur sin realizar implantes. A los animales del grupo II y III se les realizó la misma intervención, pero se les implantó un cilindro de hidroxiapatita (HA) y sulfato cálcico a dos concentraciones diferentes, 50% - 50% y 70% - 30% respectivamente. El estudio ha demostrado una regeneración ósea de la cavidad rellenada a expensas de la rápida reabsorción del yeso, y de una lenta reabsorción de la hidroxiapatita.Peer Reviewe

Anthropological and transcultural nursing in the context of education for development: a historical and epistemologic perspective in the principle of the XXI century

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en clarificar históricamente el concepto de "desarrollo" y vincularlo a otro concepto, el de "educación"con la finalidad de aportar un marco idóneo para la acción educativa en enfermería, especialmente en enfermería antropológica y transcultural. Para ello se han identificado los significados de los conceptos implicados separada y conjuntamente procurando interrelacionar los factores sociales, ideológicos, económicos, políticos, científicos y metodológicos. Asimismo, una vez analizados y contextualizados los diferentes conceptos, atendiendo a su naturaleza, se ha procedido a seleccionar las técnicas y métodos idóneos para el trabajo en educación para el desarrollo y enfermería transcultural. Entre las conclusiones cabe destacar la importancia de la contextualización de todas las actividades de educación para el desarrollo, la necesidad de adoptar métodos y técnicas adecuados al contexto de la acción educativa en enfermería. Por otro lado se ha constatado que tanto la enfermería como la educación para el desarrollo comparten el carácter holístico con el que abordan su objeto-sujeto: el hombre en el proceso de satisfacción de necesidades. Los métodos y técnicas de investigación acción resultan ser los más adecuados para este tipo de trabajos debido, sobre todo a la repercusión de la actividad investigadora en la realidad investigada (no se agota el proceso científico en la producción de conocimientos). Tanto la enfermería para el desarrollo, como la enfermería comunitaria y la enfermería transcultural comparte el principio esencial y característico de tales disciplinas: el fomento de la participación en un clima de tolerancia y solidaridad. No es posible desarrollar ninguna actividad de educación para el desarrollo, enfermería comunitaria o enfermería transcultural sin la implicación previa de los individuos, las familias o las comunidades a las que vayan dirigidas.This work has the objective of clarify the development concept historically and relative it with another concept: education; and everything this process with the purpose of contributing to selection of a suitable context for educational nursing action, specially in anthropological and transcultural nursing

La financiación universitaria como instrumento dinamizador de cambio en la universidad pública española

El propósito de este trabajo es analizar el comportamiento general del sistema de financiación de las universidades públicas españolas para mostrar hasta qué punto los mecanismos de financiación han podido coadyuvar a consolidar algunas de las deficiencias que se observan al considerar la realidad productiva de nuestras instituciones. También se pretende aportar propuestas que afectan al ámbito específico de la financiación universitaria en el convencimiento de que su implantación y generalización podría suponer un importante revulsivo para impulsar los cambios que demandan la comunidad universitaria, en particular, y la sociedad española, en general.Palabras clave: Educación universitaria, financiación. Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine how the financing system of the Spanish public universities works in order to show to what extent it may have contributed to foster some of the deficiencies to be obser­ved when studying the productivity of our ins­titutions of higher education. Additionally, the paper attempts to provide a set of proposals related to university funding, being convinced that the implementation of at least some of these proposals could give a boost to the chan­ges that both the university system and the Spanish society require. Key words: University education; financing.