Wheels within Wheels within Wheels: The Importance of Capital Inflows in the Origin of the Spanish Financial Crisis

With the creation of the Euro, the Spanish economy established an exchange rate regime similar to that adopted by many emerging economies during the 1990s. At the same time, the Eurozone as a whole adopted a currency system with features similar to the U.S. currency regime. In emerging economies, as in the U.S. economy, the adoption of these models was accompanied by strong growth in capital inflows, as well as severe financial (mostly banking) and/or macroeconomic (mostly trade) imbalances. Several authors have linked capital inflows with imbalances as cause and effect. This work uses some of those arguments, along with statistical data on the characteristics and evolution of capital inflows registered by the Spanish economy, and by the Eurozone as a whole, in order to propose a causal link between post-Euro exchange rate regimes adopted in Spain, capital inflows, and the imbalances that preceded the financial crisis of 2008

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Precursores de la Terapia Ocupacional en Colombia: sujetos, instituciones, oficios

La investigación historiográfica en Terapia Ocupacional es un campo propicio para proyectar estudios subalternos y decoloniales; este artículo hace una aproximación a la comprensión y el análisis en clave de historia social de la profesión en Colombia. Hablar del pasado en Terapia Ocupacional significa encontrar los sentidos de la ocupación a través de las prácticas, las instituciones y los sujetos. El artículo se organiza en tres apartados: uso de las ocupaciones en hospitales y otras instituciones durante la colonia en el Nuevo Reino de Granada; prácticas e instituciones hacia la consolidación de la República, y entrada al siglo XX: de la corrección a la terapia. Se identifican el trabajo y la instrucción en oficios como opción correctiva y de redención empleada en hospicios, asilos y otras instituciones desde el siglo XVII. Este recorrido sugiere una constante histórica: los oficios –la ocupación–, como práctica de las instituciones y bajo principios de caridad y beneficencia, han sido utilizados para formar, ocupar, corregir, normalizar y, en cualquier caso, hacer productivas a las personas socialmente marginadas

Clinical Synthetic Data Generation to Predict and Identify Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Diseases

Noncommunicable diseases are among the most significant health threats in our society, being cardiovascular diseases (CVD) the most prevalent. Because of the severity and prevalence of these illnesses, early detection and prevention are critical for reducing the worldwide health and economic burden. Though machine learning (ML) methods usually outperform conventional approaches in many domains, class imbalance can hinder the learning process. Oversampling techniques on the minority classes can help to overcome this issue. In particular, in this paper we apply oversampling methods to categorical data, aiming to improve the identification of risk factors associated with CVD. To conduct this study, questionnaire data (categorical) obtained by the Norwegian Centre for E-health Research associated with healthy and CVD patients are considered. The goal of this work is two-fold. Firstly, evaluating the influence of combining oversampling techniques and linear/nonlinear supervised ML methods in binary tasks. Secondly, identifying the most relevant features for predicting healthy and CVD cases. Experimental results show that oversampling and FS techniques help to improve CVD prediction. Specifically, the use of Generative Adversarial Networks and linear models usually achieve the best performance (area under the curve of 67%), outperforming other oversampling techniques. Synthetic data generation has proved to be beneficial for both identifying risk factors and creating models with reasonable generalization capability in the CVD prediction

Bis(oxazoline)-Based Coordination Polymers: A Recoverable System for Enantioselective Henry Reactions

An efficient release–capture strategy for the recovery and reuse of enantioselective catalysts in the Henry reaction is described. This strategy is based on the precipitation of an insoluble coordination polymer at the end of each reaction, allowing easy separation from products. The coordination polymer is formed through aggregation of Cu­(II) ions with ditopic bisoxazoline-based chiral ligands. Up to 11 catalytic cycles have been conducted keeping good yields and enantioselectivities

Improving the Voltammetric Quantification of Ill-Defined Peaks Using Second Derivative Signal Transformation: Example of the Determination of Platinum in Water and Sediments

The determination of trace elements using stripping voltammetry may be seriously affected by the presence of intensive matrix background or interfering peaks, leading to poorer detection limits and/or inaccurate quantitative results. In this work, we have tested the use of signal transformation (e.g., second derivative) in the analysis of platinum in seawater and sediment digests by means of catalytic adsorptive stripping voltammetry. In natural waters, the limit of detection of Pt is affected by a broad background wave due to the formazone complex used in the sample matrix for its determination, while in sediment digests, the Pt peak may be interfered with due to the presence of elevated concentrations of Zn, affecting the accuracy of the determination. Results applying second derivative signal transformation revealed a significant improvement (2–3-fold) of the detection limit in water due to the minimization of background effects, therefore allowing shorter accumulation times and faster determinations. In the presence of interfering peaks, the inaccuracy resulting from erroneous baseline selection in the original signal is eliminated when the second derivative is used. Signal processing should be considered as a useful tool for other voltammetric methodologies where more accurate or faster determinations are needed

Conocimiento y lenguaje. Problemas de semántica

Ponència del professor Helmut Gipper, de Münster, en el marc del seminari dedicat a les qüestions i punts de vista filosòfics d'Adam Schaf

High-Boron-Content Porphyrin-Cored Aryl Ether Dendrimers: Controlled Synthesis, Characterization, and Photophysical Properties

The synthesis and characterization of a set of poly­(aryl ether) dendrimers with tetraphenylporphyrin as the core and 4, 8, 16, or 32 <i>closo</i>-carborane clusters are described. A regioselective hydrosilylation reaction on the allyl-terminated functions with carboranylsilanes in the presence of Karstedt’s catalyst leads to different generations of boron-enriched dendrimers. This versatile approach allows the incorporation of a large number of boron atoms in the dendrimers’ periphery. Translational diffusion coefficients (<i>D</i>) determined by DOSY NMR experiments permit estimation of the hydrodynamic radius (<i>R</i>_H) and molecular size for each dendrimer. Furthermore, a notable correlation between <i>D</i> and the molecular weight (MW) is found and can be used to predict their overall size and folding properties. The UV–vis and emission behavior are not largely affected by the functionalization, therefore implying that the presence of carboranes does not alter their photoluminescence properties