Relativistic Quantum Scattering of High Energy Fermions in the Presence of Phase Transition

We study the high energy behaviour of fermions hitting a general wall caused by a first-order phase transition. The wall profile is introduced through a general analytic function. The reflection coefficient is computed in the high energy limit and expressed in terms of the poles of the wall profile function. It is shown that the leading singularity gives the high energy behaviour.Comment: 10 page

Validity and Reliability of an Inertial Device for Measuring Dynamic Weight-Bearing Ankle Dorsiflexion

A decrease in ankle dorsiflexion causes changes in biomechanics, and different instruments have been used for ankle dorsiflexion testing under static conditions. Consequently, the industry of inertial sensors has developed easy-to-use devices, which measure dynamic ankle dorsiflexion and provide additional parameters such as velocity, acceleration, or movement deviation. Therefore, the aims of this study were to analyze the concurrent validity and test-retest reliability of an inertial device for measuring dynamic weight-bearing ankle dorsiflexion. Sixteen participants were tested using an inertial device (WIMU) and a digital inclinometer. Ankle dorsiflexion from left and right ankle repetitions was used for validity analysis, whereas test-retest reliability was analyzed by comparing measurements from the first and second days. The standard error of the measurement (SEM) between the instruments was very low for both ankle measurements (SEM 0.05) even though a significant systematic bias (~1.77°) was found for the right ankle (d = 0.79). R2 was very close to 1 in the left and right ankles (R2 = 0.85–0.89) as well as the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC > 0.95). Test-retest reliability analysis showed that systematic bias was below 1° for both instruments, even though a systematic bias (~1.50°) with small effect size was found in the right ankle (d = 0.49) with WIMU. The ICC was very close to 1 and the coefficient of variation (CV) was lower than 4% in both instruments. Thus, WIMU is a valid and reliable inertial device for measuring dynamic weight-bearing ankle dorsiflexion

The impact of consortia purchasing of periodical publications on the document supply service

Purpose – This paper aims to show the impact of consortia purchased periodical publications on document supply services. These services have undergone considerable changes over the last five years, first decreasing but now recovering. Design/methodology/approach – First, this paper reviews the most recent specialised literature, focusing mainly on the impact of electronic journals in libraries, their effects, and proposed actions. Second, as an example of this new behaviour, presents the document supply service data, as collected in one hospital’s health-science library in the last four years. Findings – As evidenced by the literature, the users’ acceptance of electronic journals has undoubtedly been excellent. Consortia purchasing projects have become a basic tool that expand collections, support cooperative technological development, and require negotiating skills from librarians. But these mass purchases do not seem to be the ideal solution for libraries, they entail losing freedom when choosing the collection and often make library collections homogeneous by publisher. Originality/value – Reflects on what possible causes have led to the current situation and the current way to manage the collection.Publicad

Determinant factors to discriminate the body weight loss in overweight people

Introduction. Most studies have described how the weight loss is when different treatments are compared (1-3), while others have also compared the weight loss by sex (4), or have taken into account psychosocial (5) and lifestyle (6, 7) variables. However, no studies have examined the interaction of different variables and the importance of them in the weight loss. Objective. Create a model to discriminate the range of weight loss, determining the importance of each variable. Methods. 89 overweight people (BMI: 25-29.9 kg?m-2), aged from 18 to 50 years, participated in the study. Four types of treatments were randomly assigned: strength training (S), endurance training (E), strength and endurance training (SE), and control group (C). All participants followed a 25% calorie restriction diet. Two multivariate discriminant models including the variables age, sex, height, daily energy expenditure (EE), type of treatment (T), caloric restriction (CR), initial body weight (BW), initial fat mass (FM), initial muscle mass (MM) and initial bone mineral density (BMD) were performed having into account two groups: the first and fourth quartile of the % of weight loss in the first model; the groups above and below the mean of the % of weight loss in the second model. The discriminant models were built using the inclusion method in SPSS allowing us to find a function that could predict the body weight loss range that an overweight person could achieve in a 6 months weight loss intervention.Results. The first discriminant analysis predicted that a combination of the studied variables would discriminate between the two ranges of body weight loss with 81.4% of correct classification. The discriminant function obtained was (Wilks? Lambda=0.475, p=0.003): Discriminant score=-18.266-(0.060xage)- (1.282xsex[0=female;1=male])+(14.701xheight)+(0.002xEE)- (0.006xT[1=S;2=E;3=SE;4=C])-(0.047xCR)- (0.558xBW)+(0.475xFM)+(0.398xMM)+(3.499xBMD) The second discriminant model obtained would discriminate between the two groups of body weight loss with 74.4% of correct classification. The discriminant function obtained was (Wilks? Lambda=0.725, p=0.005): Discriminant score=-5.021-(0.052xage)- (0.543xsex[0=female;1=male])+(3.530xheight)+(0.001xEE)- (0.493xT[1=S;2=E;3=SE;4=C])+(0.003xCR)- (0.365xBW)+(0.368xFM)+(0.296xMM)+(4.034xBMD) Conclusion. The first developed model could predict the percentage of weight loss in the following way: if the discriminant score is close to 1.051, the range of weight loss will be from 7.44 to -4.64% and if it is close to - 1.003, the range will be from -11.03 to -25,00% of the initial body weight. With the second model if the discriminant score is close to 0.623 the body weight loss will be above -7.93% and if it is close to -0.595 will be below - 7.93% of the initial body weight. References. 1. Brochu M, et al. Resistance training does not contribute to improving the metabolic profile after a 6-month weight loss program in overweight and obese postmenopausal women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2009 Sep;94(9):3226-33. 2. Del Corral P, et al. Effect of dietary adherence with or without exercise on weight loss: a mechanistic approach to a global problem. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2009 May;94(5):1602-7. 3. Larson-Meyer DE, et al. Caloric Restriction with or without Exercise: The Fitness vs. Fatness Debate. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2010;42(1):152-9. 4. Hagan RD, et al. The effects of aerobic conditioning and/or caloric restriction in overweight men and women. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 1986;18(1):87-94. 5. Teixeira PJ, et al. Mediators of weight loss and weight loss maintenance in middle-aged women. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2010 Apr;18(4):725-35. 6. Bautista-Castano I, et al. Variables predictive of adherence to diet and physical activity recommendations in the treatment of obesity and overweight, in a group of Spanish subjects. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2004 May;28(5):697-705

Solving some special cases of monomial ratio equations appearing frequently in physical and engineering problems

We first show that monomial ratio equations are not only very common in Physics and Engineering, but the natural type of equations in many practical problems. More precisely, in the case of models involving scale variables if the used formulas are not of this type they are not physically valid. The consequence is that when estimating the model parameters we are faced with systems of monomial ratio equations that are nonlinear and difficult to solve. In this paper, we provide an original algorithm to obtain the unique solutions of systems of equations made of linear combinations of monomial ratios whose coefficient matrix has a proper null space with low dimension that permits solving the problem in a simple way. Finally, we illustrate the proposed methods by their application to two practical problems from the hydraulic and structural fields.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Performance evaluation of the Hilbert–Huang transform for respiratory sound analysis and its application to continuous adventitious sound characterization

© 2016. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/The use of the Hilbert–Huang transform in the analysis of biomedical signals has increased during the past few years, but its use for respiratory sound (RS) analysis is still limited. The technique includes two steps: empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and instantaneous frequency (IF) estimation. Although the mode mixing (MM) problem of EMD has been widely discussed, this technique continues to be used in many RS analysis algorithms. In this study, we analyzed the MM effect in RS signals recorded from 30 asthmatic patients, and studied the performance of ensemble EMD (EEMD) and noise-assisted multivariate EMD (NA-MEMD) as means for preventing this effect. We propose quantitative parameters for measuring the size, reduction of MM, and residual noise level of each method. These parameters showed that EEMD is a good solution for MM, thus outperforming NA-MEMD. After testing different IF estimators, we propose Kay¿s method to calculate an EEMD-Kay-based Hilbert spectrum that offers high energy concentrations and high time and high frequency resolutions. We also propose an algorithm for the automatic characterization of continuous adventitious sounds (CAS). The tests performed showed that the proposed EEMD-Kay-based Hilbert spectrum makes it possible to determine CAS more precisely than other conventional time-frequency techniques.Postprint (author's final draft

Ethical decision making in business: the contribution of neuroethics

[ES]: El objetivo de este artículo es analizar las aportaciones que los avances en neuroética. Empezaremos por cuestionar el paradigma dominante de la toma de decisiones empresariales desde el análisis crítico de los presupuestos epistemológicos de la teoría económica liberal, así como desde las perspectivas de las ciencias cognitivas y sus aportaciones al análisis del compartamiento humano. Continuaremos presentando dos grandes modelos de toma de decisiones éticas que se basan en la creación de sentido intuitivo y ue tienen sus fundamentos en los avances de las eurociencias. Concluiremos con breves observaciones críticas.[EN]: The aim of this article is to analyze the contribution that neuroethics research is making to business decision making. We are going to start questioning the dominant paradigm of business decision making from two perspectives. One is the critique to epistemological assumptions of the economic liberal theory and the other is based on recent results of cognitive sciences. Later on, we are going to present two models of intuitive ethical decision making and sensemaking which are being developed in recent years. Finally we present some critical considerations to these intuitive models.Este estudio se inserta en el Proyecto de Investigación Científica y Desarrollo Tecnológico FFI2010-21639-C02-01, financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (actualmente Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad) con Fondos FEDER de la Unión Europea, y en las actividades del grupo de investigación de excelencia PROMETEO/2009/085 de la Generalitat Valenciana y de la Red de Excelencia ISIC 2012/017 de la Generalitat Valenciana.Peer reviewe

La investigación sobre los mensajes comunicacionales en México : 1990-2002

El artículo ofrece una revisión de la investigación mexicana reciente sobre mensajes comunicacionales publicada en las revistas académicas más importantes de ese país de 1990 a 2002. El diagnóstico discute las principales líneas de investigación y enfoques teóricos utilizados en este campo y concluye con una evaluación de las fortalezas, deficiencias y retos para la investigación actual y futura de los contenidos comunicacionales. Se analiza un total de treinta y cinco análisis de contenido y se presenta una panorámica general de los énfasis conceptuales y temáticos dominantes en el campo. El trabajo señala que el tipo de estudios más abundante en el período de trece años fue el relativo al flujo y oferta de programación televisiva, es decir, reportes de investigación que no se centraban propiamente en las características del contenido, sino en el número particular de mensajes en las parrillas programáticas de la televisión mexicana, según su origen, género y tiempo de transmisión. En segundo término sobresalían los estudios sobre noticias internacionales inspirados por el NOMIC, y en tercer lugar trabajos sobre rutinas productivas y valores profesionales implícitos en el contenido de los mensajes.This paper presents a review of current Mexican research on media messages published in the major academic journals and books in communication in Mexico from 1990 to 2002. The review provides an overview of the principal research lines and theoretical approaches used in this field, and concludes with an evaluation of the strengths, deficiencies, and challenges for current and future research. Thirty-five Mexican content analysis reports are reviewed, and a general overview of the conceptual and thematic emphases dominant in the field is presented. The paper points out that the most abundant type of studies in the 13-year period reviewed were the ones about the flow and supply of television programming, in other words, studies not properly about the characteristics of the content but about the number of particular messages in Mexican TV according to their origin, genre, and time of transmission. Next are studies about international news inspired by the NWICO, and then content analysis of media coverage of presidential elections, and studies about media routines and professional values