Evaluación de la calidad de un servicio de voluntariado en oncología: un Análisis Importancia-Valoración (IPA)

Objective: Using an Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA), this paper examined a Radiotherapy and Oncological Patient and Non-patient perceived importance and performance of ten Humanization Volunteer Program selection factors in the General Hospital in Spain.Methods: The authors identified a list of seven items from the Health-marketing literature reviews, and each item was rated using a 5-point Likert scale. Responses were obtained of 148 usable interviews.Results: The importance-performance patient grid was corrected with literature recommendations and, in the patient sample, shows three items fall in the “Keep up the good work” quadrant, four items fall into the “Low priority” quadrant, zero items fall into the “Possible overkill” quadrant, and no items fall in the “Concentrate here” quadrant. Non-patient (n=80) factors means shows statistical differences with patient (n=68) means in catering (t=-2.38; df.=146; p<0.05), and information (t=2.16; df146; p<0,05).Conclusions: The results are useful in identifying areas for strategic focus to help Health Services managers develop humanization programs with volunteer workers and different program users. Implication to volunteer programs managers and researchers were discussed.Objetivo: Usando el Análisis de Importancia-Valoración (IPA), este artículo examina la importancia y valoración percibidas por pacientes oncológicos y sus acompañantes de un programa de humanización realizado por voluntarios en un servicio de Radioterapia de un hospital general en España.Método: Los autores identifican una lista de siete ítems que surgen de la revisión de literatura en Marketing Sanitario; cada ítem fue puntuado con una escala Likert de 5 puntos.Resultados: Los resultados se obtuvieron de las respuestas a 148 entrevistas. El gráfico fue corregido con las recomendaciones sugeridas en la literatura y en el caso de los pacientes, muestra tres factores que caen en el cuadrante de “Mantener el buen trabajo”, cuatro atributos caen dentro del cuadrante de ”Baja Prioridad” y ningún atributo se observa en los cuadrantes de “Posible dilapidación de recursos” y “Concentrarse aquí”. Se encuentran diferencias entre medias de la muestra de pacientes (n=68) y de familiares acompañantes (n=80) en los atributos de catering (t=-2,38; g.l.=146; p<0,05), y en el de información (t=2,16; g.l.=146; p<0,05).Conclusiones: Los resultados parecen útiles para identificar áreas de interés para los gestores de los servicios de salud para desarrollar programas de humanización de servicios basados en el trabajo de voluntarios y dirigidos a diferentes tipos de usuarios. Las implicaciones para los gerentes de programas de voluntariado e investigadores son discutidas

Differential in vitro and in vivo effect of barley cysteine and serine protease inhibitors on phytopathogenic microorganisms

Protease inhibitors from plants have been involved in defence mechanisms against pests and pathogens. Phytocystatins and trypsin/α-amylase inhibitors are two of the best characterized protease inhibitor families in plants. In barley, thirteen cystatins (HvCPI-1 to 13) and the BTI-CMe trypsin inhibitor have been previously studied. Their capacity to inhibit pest digestive proteases, and the negative in vivo effect caused by plants expressing these inhibitors on pests support the defence function of these proteins. Barley cystatins are also able to inhibit in vitro fungal growth. However, the antifungal effect of these inhibitors in vivo had not been previously tested. Moreover, their in vitro and in vivo effect on plant pathogenous bacteria is still unknown. In order to obtain new insights on this feature, in vitro assays were made against different bacterial and fungal pathogens of plants using the trypsin inhibitor BTI-CMe and the thirteen barley cystatins. Most barley cystatins and the BTI-CMe inhibitor were able to inhibit mycelial growth but no bacterial growth. Transgenic Arabidopsis plants independently expressing the BTI-CMe inhibitor and the cystatin HvCPI-6 were tested against the same bacterial and fungal pathogens. Neither the HvCPI-6 expressing transgenic plants nor the BTI-CMe ones were more resistant to plant pathogen fungi and bacteria than control Arabidopsis plants. The differences observed between the in vitro and in planta assays against phytopathogenic fungi are discusse

La energía solar termoeléctrica como factor de desarrollo en Andalucía

La energía solar termoeléctrica es un tipo de energía renovable de interés especial para Andalucía tanto por las horas de sol de esta región como por los costes de producción por kw/h, especialmente reducidos en comparación con otras energías renovables con implantación en el mercado. A partir de dos centrales tipo y mediante un Modelo de Equilibrio General basado en la Matriz de Contabilidad Social para Andalucía, 2008, este paper estima el impacto sectorial de esta tecnología sobre la hipótesis de alcanzar el objetivo fijado en el Plan Andaluz de Sostenibilidad Energética (PASENER) 2007-2013. Para el caso de centrales con tecnología de cilindro parabólico, el efecto total sobre los sectores económicos considerados sería de un aumento del 30.81 %, mientras que para centrales con tecnología de torre el aumento sería del 4.57 % para el total de vida útil de las plantas tipo

Efecto de la subjetividad de las cifras contables sobre la utilidad de los estados financieros para el prestamista

Este trabajo ha obtenido el Accésit Premio Estudios Financieros 2007 en la Modalidad de CONTABILIDAD Y ADMINISTRACIÓN DE EMPRESAS. Este trabajo evalúa el efecto de la subjetividad inherente al cálculo de los ajustes por devengo incorporados al resultado contable (o accruals) sobre el uso de la información contenida en los mismos para determinar el tipo de interés de los contratos de deuda. El análisis empírico se lleva a cabo en una amplia muestra de empresas españolas no cotizadas, correspondiente al período 1996-2002. El indicador de verificabilidad ex-ante (o subjetividad) de los ajustes por devengo utilizado está basado en la clasificación de los accruals propuesta por RICHARDSON et al. (2005). Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que la sensibilidad del coste de la deuda ante variaciones en la calidad de los ajustes por devengo disminuye a medida que aumenta el grado de subjetividad inherente a su cálculo, sugiriendo que la probabilidad de que el prestamista utilice los ajustes por devengo en su toma de decisiones disminuye conforme aumenta la subjetividad inherente a su determinación

Economic impacts of solar thermal electricity technology deployment on Andalusian productive activities: a CGE approach

Solar thermal electricity is a type of renewable energy technology of special interest for Andalusia (southern Spain) because of the large number of annual sunshine hours. This paper estimates the impact on productive activities of increasing the production capacity of the installed solar thermal plants in Andalusia. Using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) approach, estimates of the changes in the economic sectors’ activity under two different scenarios are obtained: i) based on two types of solar thermal electricity plants currently in operation and ii) based on an increase from 11MW in 2007 to 800MW installed capacity by 2013 to comply with the ‘Plan Andaluz de Sostenibilidad Energética (PASENER)—Sustainable Energy Plan for Andalusia’. For the case of a parabolic trough solar collector power plant, results show that compliance with the PASENER goal would increase the level of the productive activities by around 30%. For the alternative technology—a solar tower power plant—results show that activities would increase by around 5% for 30 years, the estimated lifetime of this type of plant. Thus, the impact of the solar terma

Detecting Serial Arcs in Aeronautical Applications Using Inductive Sensors

There is a clear trend in the aircraft industry to use more electrical systems in propulsion and electromechanical and electrohydraulic actuators to comply with environmental sustainability and to improve reliability and maintenance processes. The increase of electrical consumption requires an increase of the rated voltages to supply power to these so called more electrical aircraft (MEA). Unfortunately, this voltage rise, currently up to 540 V$_{dc}$, can lead to ionization processes within the electric wiring due to the lower air density at high altitudes. As a consequence, a degraded insulation can create extremely hazardous events in flight such as arcs between wires (serial) or between wires and fuselage (parallel). Serial arcs in dc bus circuits are specially dangerous for the aircraft operation, so its detection within fractions of seconds is required to ensure a reliable operation. However, during a sustained serial arc the rated current can be passing through air deceiving the protections and avoiding their tripping. In this article, it has been found that arcing introduces high frequency current pulses superimposed to the dc component that can be identified to detect the occurrence of an arc. The frequency components of these pulses depend on the line characteristics and can be detected with inductive sensors. This manuscript also designs and tests a light and inexpensive sensor for arc detection in aircraft applications.This work was supported by Airbus DS internal funding and by the Centro de Desarrollo Tecnologico e Industrial (CDTI) of the Spanish Goverment under Contract CDTI-HV-NET/IDI-20190530. Tests have been done in the high-voltage research and test laboratory (LINEALT) at the University Carlos III of Madri

Cardiorespiratory fitness and bone turnover markers in adults with metabolic syndrome: the mediator role of inflammation

The relationship between inflammatory markers and bone turnover in adults is well known, whilst a negative association between cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and inflammatory markers has also been described. Hence, we tested whether the association between CRF and bone turnover markers is mediated by inflammatory markers in adults with metabolic syndrome. A total of 81 adults (58.5±5.0 yrs, 62.7% women) were included in the analysis. CRF was measured by the six-minute walking test. Serum interleukine (IL)-1β, IL-6, IL-10, tumor necrosis factor alpha, high-sensitivity c-reactive protein (hsCRP) and vascular endothelial growth factor, collagen type I cross-linked C-telopeptide, procollagen type I N-terminal propeptide (P1NP) and total osteocalcin were assessed using a sensitive ELISA kit. Body composition was assessed by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. Partial correlation was used to test the relationship between CRF, inflammatory markers and bone turnover markers, controlling for sex, lean mass and fat mass. Boot-strapped mediation procedures were performed and indirect effects with confidence intervals not including zero were interpreted as statistically significant. CRF was positively correlated with P1NP levels (r=0.228, p=0.044) and osteocalcin levels (r=0.296, p=0.009). Furthermore, CRF was positively correlated with IL-1β levels (r=0.340, p=0.002) and negatively correlated with hsCRP levels (r=-0.335, p=0.003), whereas IL-1β levels were positively correlated with P1NP levels (r=0.245, p=0.030) and hsCRP levels were negatively correlated with P1NP levels (r=-0.319, p=0.004). Finally, the association between CRF and P1NP levels was totally mediated by hsCRP (PM=39.9). Therefore, CRF benefits on bone formation could be dependent on hsCRP concentrations in this population.Heart and Diseases Foundation (Fondation 234 Coeur et Artères) 59200 Loos, Franc

Key market values for bottled wine in an emerging market: product attributes or business strategy?

This article focuses on the emerging bottled Chilean red wine market and studies the main determinants of the consumer price of wine sold on the domestic market. A hedonic price function was estimated for a sample of 810 wines using a quantile regression (QR) model. The database contains three variables groups to explain price: objective variables (national, international, and vine quality designations), subjective variables (wine score), and business strategies used by wine producers.Postprint (author's final draft

A Domain-Adaptable Heterogeneous Information Integration Platform: Tourism and Biomedicine Domains.

In recent years, information integration systems have become very popular in mashup-type applications. Information sources are normally presented in an individual and unrelated fashion, and the development of new technologies to reduce the negative effects of information dispersion is needed. A major challenge is the integration and implementation of processing pipelines using different technologies promoting the emergence of advanced architectures capable of processing such a number of diverse sources. This paper describes a semantic domain-adaptable platform to integrate those sources and provide high-level functionalities, such as recommendations, shallow and deep natural language processing, text enrichment, and ontology standardization. Our proposed intelligent domain-adaptable platform (IDAP) has been implemented and tested in the tourism and biomedicine domains to demonstrate the adaptability, flexibility, modularity, and utility of the platform. Questionnaires, performance metrics, and A/B control groups’ evaluations have shown improvements when using IDAP in learning environmentspost-print2139 K