Approach to the concept of quaternary prevention in Genetics and Clinical Dysmorphology.

Dismorfología, Citogenética y Clínica: Resultados de estudios sobre los datos del ECEMCPreventive medicine is an important area of health care, mainly in Primary Health Care. Because it is acted on healthy people (in Genetics and Dysmorphology mainly in foetal and neonatal period), preventive medicine needs even stronger supporting evidence (on benefits, harms and costs) than therapeutic and/or diagnostic interventions. The aims of this article are: a) to present the theorical concepts related to screening test in Genetics and Dysmorphology for early diseases detection, with special attention to main potential harm in overdiagnosis (false positive), causing unnecessary anxiety and intervention, and also to screening bias; and b) to present the interesting relation between preventive medicine with two new concepts (quaternary prevention and cascade effect), because it is important to know the clinical and ethical implications of screening programmes and to achieve and evidence-based decision-making in this outstanding area of health. Quaternary prevention is a new concept in preventive medicine (beyond the classical primary, secondary and tertiary prevention) whose objective is to avoid and/or to diminish the unnecessary medical intervention, and is the practical version of the "primum non nocere". Quaternary prevention has a multifactorial origin, in relation to social, cultural, economic, political and/or medical factors. Today, we have the danger to happen towards the "risk culture" and, consequently, to the diagnostic, therapeutic and/or preventive excess, named as cascade effect, with clinical and ethical implications in medical practice. Genetic testing of children is an interesting field in this area of preventive medicine. It is clearly appropriate to perform genetic testing of minors when the problem in question can be rectified, treated, or prevented but the decision is difficult when the risk from the test may be significant, the statistical risk of disease is minimal, and the benefit or early diagnosis is small. Hereditary haemochromatosis, by example, would seem to be an ideal disease for community population-screening with genetic testing, but the major concerns have been the uncertainty surrounding the natural history of untreated disease, informed consent, labelling and stigmatisation among participants that may never develop illness, and genetic discrimination. In Dysmorphology is interesting to know the real value of "guide signs" for posterior diagnostic and screening tests, and we expose to examples on the matter: developmental dysplasia of the hip and Prader-Willi syndrome.N

Scientific communication (XXI). Basic knowledge to read (and write) a scientific paper (8): Checklists of diagnostic test

[EN]: Before a new diagnostic test and before the use in clinical practice, it is necessary to know its validity. And to validate studies of diagnostic tests it is necessary they have methodological rigor in the design and applicability. In diagnostic tests we can consider two checklists: STARD for validity and QUA-DAS for quality. The STARD statement defines a list of 25 questions and one flowchart to be followed for an appropriate study design, given the inclusion of patients, the order of performing the test, the number of patients receiving the test and the selected reference. The QUADAS statement consists, of four key areas including: selection of patients, test under study, reference standards, and patient flow and timetable.[ES]: Ante una nueva prueba diagnóstica, y antes de utilizarla en la práctica clínica, es necesario conocer su validez. Y para que los estudios de pruebas diagnósticas sean válidos, es preciso que tengan rigor metodológico en cuanto a su diseño y aplicabilidad. En las pruebas diagnósticas podemos considerar dos listas guía de comprobación: STARD para la validez y QUADAS para la calidad. La declaración STARD define un listado de 25 preguntas y un diagrama de flujo que debería seguirse para que el diseño de un estudio sea adecuado, teniendo en cuenta la inclusión de los pacientes, el orden de la realización de la prueba, el número de pacientes que reciben la prueba y la prueba de referencia seleccionada. La declaración QUADAS está formada por cuatro áreas fundamentales: a) selección de los pacientes; b) prueba en estudio; c) estándares de referencia, y d) flujo de pacientes y cronograma.Peer Reviewe

Scientific communication (XXIII). Medical language (1): The use and abuse of abbreviations and acronyms in the medical language and in Pediatrics

[EN]: Abbreviations (abbreviations, acronyms and symbols) are widely used in all scientific fields, especially in health sciences, usually used as a resource to gain time and save space. However, they can cause communication problems between professionals from different levels of care and may incur misunderstandings that can lead to serious consequences, especially in drug prescriptions in childhood. This article revises the rules that define their construction and use, describes problems of their use in scientific communication, proposes solutions to avoid acronyms and details some search engines about acronyms on the internet.[EN]: Abbreviations (abbreviations, acronyms and symbols) are widely used in all scientific fields, especially in health sciences, usually used as a resource to gain time and save space. However, they can cause communication problems between professionals from different levels of care and may incur misunderstandings that can lead to serious consequences, especially in drug prescriptions in childhood. This article revises the rules that define their construction and use, describes problems of their use in scientific communication, proposes solutions to avoid acronyms and details some search engines about acronyms on the internet.Peer Reviewe

Scientific communication (XIX). Basic knowledge to read (and write) a scientific paper (6): checklists of experimental studies

[EN]: Clinical trials are considered the gold standard in therapeutic interventions and the key factor in these studies is randomization. The germ of these lists guide comes from the standards applied to randomized clinical trial, the gold standard of biomedical publication, and it needs to be described in detail, accurately and transparently, both the design, implementation, analysis and results. However, the information provided in the publications is often inadequate or inaccurate, and these deficiencies motivated in 1996 the development of the CONSORT statement. We are in the third generation of the CONSORT statement and we review the 25 items that are considered critical and that should be included in any report of a randomized clinical trial. Nonrandomized intervention studies are needed when there are reasons that prevent the realization of a randomized clinical trial, but the TREND checklist should be used to communicate transparently the results. In this article we also review the 22 items of the TREND statement with a brief description of each one.[ES]: El ensayo clínico es el diseño que se considera el «patrón oro» en intervenciones terapéuticas, y el factor clave es la aleatorización. El germen de estas listas guía procede de los estándares aplicados al ensayo clínico aleatorizado, «patrón oro» de la publicación biomédica, y es preciso que se describan detalladamente, con exactitud y transparencia, su diseño, ejecución, análisis y resultados. Sin embargo, la información facilitada en las publicaciones es muchas veces insuficiente o inexacta, carencias que motivaron el desarrollo de la declaración CONSORT en 1996. Nos encontramos en la tercera generación de la declaración CONSORT y revisamos los 25 ítems considerados críticos que, por tanto, deberían incluirse en todo informe de un ensayo clínico aleatorizado. Cuando existen razones que impidan la realización de un ensayo clínico aleatorizado es necesario efectuar estudios de intervención no aleatorizados, pero para comunicar con transparencia los resultados obtenidos en ellos debe emplearse la lista de comprobación TREND. En este artículo también revisamos los 22 ítems de la declaración TREND con una breve descripción de cada uno.Peer Reviewe

Scientometric analysis of the biomedical publications about genetic and clinical dysmorphology

Artículo EspecialGenetic and dysmorphology sciences form a multidisciplinary field that produces a wide range of scientific journals. The aim of this study was to perform a scientometric analysis of genetic science journals in Journal Citation Reports-Science Citation Index. Methodology: we study the three areas dedicated to genetic sciences (Genetics & Heredity, Develpmental Biology and Toxicology) in the 2007 JCR-SCI edition. Bibliometric indicators used are: journals, articles, citations, impact factor (IF), immediacy index, half life and journals with the greatest IF in each speciality. We also perform a special analysis about publications of ECEMC working group in JCR-SCI. Results: in the area of Genetics & Heredity we found a total of 132 journals, 16,059 articles, 675,463 citations and an average IF of 2,595, the greatest IF belonging to Nat Genet (25,556) and Nat Rev Genet (22,399). The area of Develpmental Biology contains 37 journals, 3,749 articles, 199.213 citations and an average IF of 2,688, the greatest IF belonging to Annu Rev Cell Dev Bio (23,545) and Gene Dev (114,795). The area of Toxicology contains 73 journals, 7,874 articles, 193,395 citations and an average IF of 1,942, the greatest IF belonging to Annu Rev Pharmacol (21,696) and Crit Rev Toxicol (5,145). ECEMC working group has 111 articles in JCR published in the last 10 years, mainly in the area of Genetics & Heredity and in journals with IF 2 . Conclusions: we found out a broad representation of journals in the field of genetic and dysmorphology from the 6,426 journals included in the 2007 JCR-SCI edition. Bibliometric characteristics differ in accordance to nature of the three areas. The contribution of ECEMC working group is important in number and quality of publications in this database. Due to significant limitations observed in the IF, we suggest conducting its analysis from a multidimensional bibliometric perspective, and always within its contextual research area.N

On local CAC schemes for scalability of high-speed networks

This article has been extended from the original: “On local CAC schemes for scalability of high-speed networks” by the same authors, which was presented on the International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON) held in Athens, Greece, on June 22-26, 2008Next generation networks are required to provide bandwidth on-demand for sessions with fine-time granularity. In this sense, centralized CAC (Connection Admission Control) approaches could suffer from scalability problems if the number of requests for connections is excessive. In this paper we investigate local CAC schemes where the admission decisions are performed at the network edges, based on precalculated admission quotas.The authors would like to acknowledge the BONE Network of Excellence, partially funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme, the MUSE project, partially funded by the EU Sixth FP, and the RUBENS project as part of the EUREKA CELTIC initiativ

Wideband Transition for Increased-Height Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide

(c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.[EN] Recently, Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide (ESIW) technology was proposed for embedding empty waveguides into planar substrates in order to improve their performance. A low-loss and narrow-band transition from microstrip to an increased height ESIW with 4 layers was presented in a previous work, and used to implement a very high-quality factor bandpass filter at Q-band. With such a narrow-band transition, based on a quarter-wavelength transformer, a very narrow-band filter response with resonators having a quality factor of 1000 was achieved. In this paper, in order to overcome the narrow-band and the 4-layers output restrictions, and extend the practical use of such increased height ESIWs beyond narrow-band filters, we present a novel wideband transition from microstrip to an increased height ESIW with an arbitrary number of layers. A full suite of wideband transitions to increased height ESIWs, built with different number of substrate layers ranging from 3 to 8, has been designed in this work to operate at Ka-band, though they can be easily transferred to other bands if the dimensions of the transition are properly scaled. To illustrate this, the original Ka-band transitions have been mapped to Ku-band, with excellent results. In order to test the proposed design method, a prototype of a 4-layer structure has been fabricated at Ka-band, achieving a good performance in the whole useful bandwidth of the ESIW.This work was supported in part by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spanish Government, under Project TEC2016-75934-C4-3-R and Project TEC2016-75934-C4-1-R, and in part by the Consejeria de Educacion, Cultura y Deportes, Autonomous Government of Castilla-La Mancha, under Project SBPLY/17/180501/000351.Martínez-Zamora, JÁ.; Belenguer Martínez, A.; De Dios, JJ.; Esteban González, H.; Boria Esbert, VE. (2019). Wideband Transition for Increased-Height Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide. IEEE Access. 7:149406-149413. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2947215S149406149413

Integration of a Very High Quality Factor Filter in Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide at Q-band

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permissíon from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertisíng or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.[EN] Recently, new methodologies for manufacturing empty waveguides completely integrated in a planar substrate have been proposed in order to improve the performance of substrate-integrated devices. One of these alternatives is the so-called empty substrate-integrated waveguide (ESIW). The height of high-frequency substrates, where ESIW devices are integrated, is very small. Then, the capacity of storing energy of ESIW resonators is drastically reduced, and as a result, their quality factor is not as high as it could be with a higher ESIW. In order to overcome this restriction, a novel integrated structure is proposed to embed very high-quality factor filters based on the ESIW with an increased height. As a result, we show, in this letter, for the first time, the successful integration of an increased-height ESIW filter in a printed circuit board of 0.305 mm height at Q-band, achieving a quality factor above 1000, which is a remarkable result for a completely substrate-integrated device operating in this frequency band. When compared with the same filter manufactured with an ESIW with the same height as the substrate, the novel filter shows a measured quality factor 85% higher.This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spanish Government, under Project TEC2016-75934-C4-3-R and Project TEC2016-75934-C4-1-R.Martínez-Zamora, JÁ.; De Dios, JJ.; Belenguer Martínez, Á.; Esteban González, H.; Boria Esbert, VE. (2018). Integration of a Very High Quality Factor Filter in Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide at Q-band. IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters. 28(6):503-505. https://doi.org/10.1109/LMWC.2018.2833214S50350528

Combining Static and Dynamic Contract Checking for Curry

Static type systems are usually not sufficient to express all requirements on function calls. Hence, contracts with pre- and postconditions can be used to express more complex constraints on operations. Contracts can be checked at run time to ensure that operations are only invoked with reasonable arguments and return intended results. Although such dynamic contract checking provides more reliable program execution, it requires execution time and could lead to program crashes that might be detected with more advanced methods at compile time. To improve this situation for declarative languages, we present an approach to combine static and dynamic contract checking for the functional logic language Curry. Based on a formal model of contract checking for functional logic programming, we propose an automatic method to verify contracts at compile time. If a contract is successfully verified, dynamic checking of it can be omitted. This method decreases execution time without degrading reliable program execution. In the best case, when all contracts are statically verified, it provides trust in the software since crashes due to contract violations cannot occur during program execution.Comment: Pre-proceedings paper presented at the 27th International Symposium on Logic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation (LOPSTR 2017), Namur, Belgium, 10-12 October 2017 (arXiv:1708.07854