Legal Cooperation Issues on Sea Level Rise

This is a very timely event. Although there have been several cases in which experts—both academics and governments—discuss the connection between sea-level rise and the legal framework, this event is important because it will bring to the forefront the fact that the practice in the Americas and the Caribbean should be analyzed when discussing this pressing topic. This is a very important initiative; I encourage the Inter-American system and the juridical committee to tackle this issue. I hope it will be in connection with the work that is being conducted by the International Law Commission itself

METRICS AND NEATENING OF HANDWRITTEN CHARACTERS

At the present time, with the technology that many portable devices have, pen-based input is widely supported and input can be done through handwriting rather than just by typing. While character recognition and other input issues are the main consideration with these devices, there are many interesting output issues related to digital ink. This thesis investigates the questions of handwriting neatening and personal handwriting fonts. We use the notion of “character metrics”, .which refer to the location and size of various features, such as ascender height and character width. Recording these features for handwritten characters allows for input and output transformations and may help with recognition in a 2-dimensional setting such as for mathematical handwriting recognition. To be able to create personalized handwriting fonts, we have constructed a tool to collect samples where lines related to the characters metrics can be recorded. Handwriting always comes with variations in alignment and size so certain measurements based on these metrics can be extracted to perform the desired transformations to obtain a set of samples in a normalized form

Coaching educativo y desarrollo profesional en docentes de una institución educativa nacional, UGEL 05. Lima, 2021

El presente estudio de investigación titulado “Coaching educativo y desarrollo profesional en docentes de una Institución Educativa Nacional UGEL 05. Lima,2021.” Tuvo como objetivo determinar la influencia del coaching educativo en el desarrollo profesional en los docentes de una Institución Educativa Nacional de la UGEL 05. Lima, 2021. El estudio fue de tipo aplicado, de nivel explicativo, con un enfoque cuantitativo, no experimental de diseño correlacional causal. Se contó con una población y muestra de 43 docentes de los tres niveles de educación básica regular, contando con todo el íntegro de esa población, para ello se usó la técnica de la encuesta y dos cuestionarios como instrumento para la recolección de datos para las variables, ante ello se contó con una escala ordinal Likert, así mismo se contó con la validación de juicios de tres expertos, el cual se sustentó con la prueba de Alfa de Crombach de 0.92. Los resultados permitieron concluir que El coaching educativo influye significativamente en el desarrollo profesional de los docentes de una Institución Educativa Nacional de la UGEL 05. Lima, 2021. Lo anterior con una sig. de ,000; y Cox y Snell de ,998 y Nagelkerke de ,999

The appropriate counseling on prenatal screening test for foreign women in Emilia-Romagna

Objective: The increase in the migratory phenomenon entails the need to adapt obstetric care to the population which includes foreign pregnant women. In this context, it emerged a little adherence to the prenatal screening test among foreign women compared to Italian women, which is assumed to be attributable to an inadequate counseling. This study aims to evaluate midwife's perception of the  counseling effectiveness in foreign women for the combined test and subsequently assess its adequacy through an external evaluation. Methods: this is a cross-sectional study conducted from September to November 2019. An ad hoc questionnaire was administered to midwives working in the territorial district of the Emilia-Romagna Region, investigating their counseling skills. Then an external evaluation of the counseling was conducted by observing the interview between the midwives and the patients (N = 10), to analyze its appropriateness. Results: Seventy-five midwives completed the questionnaire with a positive response rate of 57.2%. In general, 69.3% of midwives are satisfied with the training received from the regional course, but 85% found many difficulties in counseling foreign women. The 14% of midwives state that they always have the cultural and linguistic mediator available and 44% of them state that they use brochures translated into several foreign languages. In the interviews observed, the counseling to foreign women was found to be shorter and more limited than that provided to Italian women. Conclusions: Most of the consulting midwives declare that they feel prepared to perform a correct prenatal counseling also for foreign women, but the external evaluation of the interviews, and the regional data on adherence to the antenatal screening of foreign women, show many critical points. It becomes necessary to carry out further studies that investigate not only the counseling skills of midwives, but also the needs of assisted women about prenatal diagnosis

Clinical Screening Prediction in the Portuguese National Health Service: Data Analysis, Machine Learning Models, Explainability and Meta-Evaluation

This paper presents an analysis of the calls made to the Portuguese National Health Contact Center (SNS24) during a three years period. The final goal was to develop a system to help nurse attendants select the appropriate clinical pathway (from 59 options) for each call. It examines several aspects of the calls distribution like age and gender of the user, date and time of the call and final referral, among others and presents comparative results for alternative classification models (SVM and CNN) and different data samples (three months, one and two years data models). For the task of selecting the appropriate pathway, the models, learned on the basis of the available data, achieved F1 values that range between 0.642 (3 months CNN model) and 0.783 (2 years CNN model), with SVM having a more stable performance (between 0.743 and 0.768 for the corresponding data samples). These results are discussed regarding error analysis and possibilities for explaining the system decisions. A final meta evaluation, based on a clinical expert overview, compares the different choices: the nurse attendants (reference ground truth), the expert and the automatic decisions (2 models), revealing a higher agreement between the ML models, followed by their agreement with the clinical expert, and minor agreement with the reference.This research work was funded by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P, within the project SNS24.Scout.IA—Aplicação de Metodologias de Inteligência Artificial e Processamento de Linguagem Natural no Serviço de Triagem, Aconselhamento e Encaminhamento do SNS24 (ref. DSAIPA/AI/0040/2019)

Metodología para la creación y gestión de un sistema de seguimiento de egresados de la Facultad de Ciencias Matemáticas y su aplicación en la mejora de los títulos

Fac. de Ciencias MatemáticasFALSEUCMsubmitte

Diseño de materiales virtuales y de blended learning para paliar el efecto de ajuste de presencialidad en los grados de la Facultad de Ciencias Matemáticas

Informe del proyecto de innovación docente para el diseño de una metodología b-learning en distintos grupos de las asignaturas de segundo curso del programa de grados de la Facultad de Matemáticas y desarrollo de materiales de autoaprendizaje y prácticas virtuales

Falls predict acute hospitalization in Parkinson's disease

Background: There is a need for identifying risk factors for hospitalization in Parkinson's disease (PD) and also interventions to reduce acute hospital admission. Objective: To analyze the frequency, causes, and predictors of acute hospitalization (AH) in PD patients from a Spanish cohort. Methods: PD patients recruited from 35 centers of Spain from the COPPADIS-2015 (COhort of Patients with PArkinson's DIsease in Spain, 2015) cohort from January 2016 to November 2017, were included in the study. In order to identify predictors of AH, Kaplan-Meier estimates of factors considered as potential predictors were obtained and Cox regression performed on time to hospital encounter 1-year after the baseline visit. Results: Thirty-five out of 605 (5.8%) PD patients (62.5±8.9 years old; 59.8% males) presented an AH during the 1-year follow-up after the baseline visit. Traumatic falls represented the most frequent cause of admission, being 23.7% of all acute hospitalizations. To suffer from motor fluctuations (HR [hazard ratio] 2.461; 95% CI, 1.065-5.678; p = 0.035), a very severe non-motor symptoms burden (HR [hazard ratio] 2.828; 95% CI, 1.319-6.063; p = 0.008), falls (HR 3.966; 95% CI 1.757-8.470; p = 0.001), and dysphagia (HR 2.356; 95% CI 1.124-4.941; p = 0.023) was associated with AH after adjustment to age, gender, disease duration, levodopa equivalent daily dose, total number of non-antiparkinsonian drugs, and UPDRS-IIIOFF. Of the previous variables, only falls (HR 2.998; 95% CI 1.080-8.322; p = 0.035) was an independent predictor of AH. Conclusion: Falls is an independent predictor of AH in PD patients

the novel role of epigenetics in primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases

A great deal of evidences indicate that impaired fetal growth and in utero exposure to risk factors, especially maternal hypercholesterolemia, may be relevant for human pathophysiological signs of atherosclerosis and subsequent development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) during different life stages. Despite the underlying mechanisms of fetal programming are still unknown, epigenetics has been suggested as one of the possible explanations for the associations between intrauterine risk factors and CVD development. Indeed, a lot of translational studies support the hypothesis that epigenetic changes are related to increased CVD risk although it is still not possible to establish a direct causality in humans. Notably, epigenetic modifications can be reversible through therapeutic approaches employing histone deacetylase inhibitors, histone acetyltransferase inhibitors and commonly used drugs like statins. Thus, the whole comprehension of these mechanisms will provide in the next future the rationale for the development of novel tools to be used in the primary prevention and therapy of CVD

COVID-19 Severity in Multiple Sclerosis: Putting Data Into Context

Background and objectives: It is unclear how multiple sclerosis (MS) affects the severity of COVID-19. The aim of this study is to compare COVID-19-related outcomes collected in an Italian cohort of patients with MS with the outcomes expected in the age- and sex-matched Italian population. Methods: Hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and death after COVID-19 diagnosis of 1,362 patients with MS were compared with the age- and sex-matched Italian population in a retrospective observational case-cohort study with population-based control. The observed vs the expected events were compared in the whole MS cohort and in different subgroups (higher risk: Expanded Disability Status Scale [EDSS] score > 3 or at least 1 comorbidity, lower risk: EDSS score ≤ 3 and no comorbidities) by the χ2 test, and the risk excess was quantified by risk ratios (RRs). Results: The risk of severe events was about twice the risk in the age- and sex-matched Italian population: RR = 2.12 for hospitalization (p < 0.001), RR = 2.19 for ICU admission (p < 0.001), and RR = 2.43 for death (p < 0.001). The excess of risk was confined to the higher-risk group (n = 553). In lower-risk patients (n = 809), the rate of events was close to that of the Italian age- and sex-matched population (RR = 1.12 for hospitalization, RR = 1.52 for ICU admission, and RR = 1.19 for death). In the lower-risk group, an increased hospitalization risk was detected in patients on anti-CD20 (RR = 3.03, p = 0.005), whereas a decrease was detected in patients on interferon (0 observed vs 4 expected events, p = 0.04). Discussion: Overall, the MS cohort had a risk of severe events that is twice the risk than the age- and sex-matched Italian population. This excess of risk is mainly explained by the EDSS score and comorbidities, whereas a residual increase of hospitalization risk was observed in patients on anti-CD20 therapies and a decrease in people on interferon