Beyond Clinical High-Risk State for Psychosis: The Network Structure of Multidimensional Psychosis Liability in Adolescents

OBJECTIVES: The main goal of the present study was to analyze the network structure of schizotypy dimensions in a representative sample of adolescents from the general population. Moreover, the network structure between schizotypy, mental health difficulties, subjective well-being, bipolar-like experiences, suicide ideation and behavior, psychotic-like experiences, positive and negative affect, prosocial behavior, and IQ was analyzed. METHOD: The study was conducted in a sample of 1,506 students selected by stratified random cluster sampling. The Oviedo Schizotypy Assessment Questionnaire, the Personal Wellbeing Index-School Children, the Paykel Suicide Scale, the Mood Disorder Questionnaire, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, the Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children Shortened Version, and the Matrix Reasoning Test were used. RESULTS: The estimated schizotypy network was interconnected. The most central nodes in terms of standardized Expected Influence (EI) were 'unusual perceptual experiences' and 'paranoid ideation'. Predictability ranged from 8.7% ('physical anhedonia') to 52.7% ('unusual perceptual experiences'). The average predictability was 36.27%, implying that substantial variability remained unexplained. For the multidimensional psychosis liability network predictability values ranged from 9% (estimated IQ) to 74.90% ('psychotic-like experiences'). The average predictability was 43.46%. The results of the stability and accuracy analysis indicated that all networks were accurately estimated. CONCLUSIONS: The present paper points to the value of conceptualizing psychosis liability as a dynamic complex system of interacting cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and affective characteristics. In addition, provide new insights into the nature of the relationships between schizotypy, as index of psychosis liability, and the role played by risk and protective factors.Swiss National Science Foundation (100019_159440)Europa FEDER La Rioja 2014-2020 (SRS 6FRSABC026

Empirical analysis of daily cash flow time series and its implications for forecasting

Usual assumptions on the statistical properties of daily net cash flows include normality,absence of correlation and stationarity. We provide a comprehensive study based on a real-world cash flow data set showing that: (i) the usual assumption of normality, absence of correlation and stationarity hardly appear; (ii) non-linearity is often relevant for forecasting; and (iii) typical data transformations have little impact on linearity and normality. This evidence may lead to consider a more data-driven approach such as time-series forecasting in an attempt to provide cash managers with expert systems in cash management

Design of a case management model for people with chronic disease (Heart Failure and COPD). Phase I: modeling and identification of the main components of the intervention through their actors: patients and professionals (DELTA-ICE-PRO Study

Background Chronic diseases account for nearly 60% of deaths around the world. The extent of this silent epidemic has not met determined responses in governments, policies or professionals in order to transform old Health Care Systems, configured for acute diseases. There is a large list of research about alternative models for people with chronic conditions, many of them with an advanced practice nurse as a key provider, as case management. But some methodological concerns raise, above all, the design of the intervention (intensity, frequency, components, etc). Methods/Design Objectives: General: To develop the first and second phases (theorization and modeling) for designing a multifaceted case-management intervention in people with chronic conditions (COPD and heart failure) and their caregivers. Specific aims: 1) To identify key events in people living with chronic disease and their relation with the Health Care System, from their point of view. 2) To know the coping mechanisms developed by patients and their caregivers along the story with the disease. 3) To know the information processing and its utilization in their interactions with health care providers. 4) To detect potential unmet needs and the ways deployed by patients and their caregivers to resolve them. 5) To obtain a description from patients and caregivers, about their itineraries along the Health Care System, in terms of continuity, accessibility and comprehensiveness of care. 6) To build up a list of promising case-management interventions in patients with Heart Failure and COPD with this information in order to frame it into theoretical models for its reproducibility and conceptualization. 7) To undergo this list to expert judgment to assess its feasibility and pertinence in the Andalusian Health Care. Design: Qualitative research with two phases: For the first five objectives, a qualitative technique with biographic stories will be developed and, for the remaining objectives, an expert consensus through Delphi technique, on the possible interventions yielded from the first phase. The study will be developed in the provinces of Almería, Málaga and Granada in the Southern Spain, from patients included in the Andalusian Health Care Service database with the diagnosis of COPD or Heart Failure, with the collaboration of case manager nurses and general practitioners for the assessment of their suitability to inclusion criteria. Patients and caregivers will be interviewed in their homes or their Health Centers, with their family or their case manager nurse as mediator. Discussion First of a series of studies intended to design a case-management service for people with heart failure and COPD, in the Andalusian Health Care System, where case management has been implemented since 2002. Accordingly with the steps of a theoretical model for complex interventions, in this study, theorization and intervention modeling phases will be developed.This research was carried out with the support of one research grant, awarded by the Regional Health Ministry of Andalusia (Exp. 0222/2008

Seismically-induced landslides by a low-magnitude earthquake: The Mw 4.7 Ossa De Montiel event (central Spain)

The Ossa de Montiel (2015/02/23, Mw 4.7) earthquake struck the central part of Spain and was felt far from the epicenter (> 300 km). Even though ground shaking was slight (Imax = V, EMS-98 scale), the earthquake triggered many small rock falls, most at distances of 20–30 km from the epicenter, greater than previously recorded in S Spain (16 km) for earthquakes of similar magnitudes. The comparative analysis of available data for this event with records from other quakes of the Betic cordillera (S and SE Spain) seems to indicate a slower pattern of ground-motion attenuation in central Spain. This could explain why slope instabilities occurred at larger distances. Instability was more frequent, and occurred at larger distances, in road cuts than in natural slopes, implying that such slope types are highly susceptible to seismically induced landslides.This work has been funded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, research project CGL2011-30153-C02-02, and by the research groups RNM-374 (Junta de Andalucía), TECTAC (UCM-910368) and VIGROB-184 (Universidad de Alicante). Mr. Loffredo acknowledges funding of the Università di Roma — La Sapienza (post-graduate grant) (Concorso A N.480 - Area CUN 04)

A fast model to resolve the velocity-space of fast-ion losses detected in ASDEX Upgrade and MAST Upgrade

A forward model to resolve the fast-ion loss velocity-space on a fast-ion loss detector (FILD) probe head (FILDSIM) has been extended, making it possible to perform real-time analysis of the FILD data ("real-time FILDSIM"). Parametric pre-processing with FILDSIM enables real-time mapping of the raw FILD measurements to the velocity-space of the fast-ion distribution reaching the FILD probe, which depends on the local magnetic field at the probe head. Such parametric pre-processing facilitates the study of fast-ion losses in stages of the discharge other than the flat-top, such as the ramp-up phase when changes in the local magnetic field at the probe head cannot be neglected. Real-time FILDSIM has been applied to the existing and newly installed FILDs in ASDEX Upgrade and will be used for the forthcoming FILD in MAST-Upgrade. Due to the larger size of the MAST-U FILD probe, the approximation used in FILDSIM of a uniform magnetic field in the FILD region has been generalised to the case of a non-uniform field, with gyro-orbits calculated numerically in this field.Universidad de Sevilla PP2016-7145Comunidad Europea de Energía Atómica (EURATOM) 633305

Optimizing subject design, timing, and focus in a diversity of engineering courses through the use of a low-cost Arduino shield

This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of a novel circuitry that extends the popular Arduino UNO microcontroller board to facilitate multiple educational activities in engineering courses. In particular, the aim of this board, the UMA-AEB, is to minimize the overhead that is usually imposed on the students before they can conduct the actual exercises, yet retain the valuable experiences that could otherwise not be acquired with simulated experiments or inflexible electronic training-benches.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. This work has been supported by the University of Málaga (Spain) through the educational innovation project PIE-15-093 “Innovación en el trabajo en laboratorio de una diversidad de asignaturas de ingeniería mediante el diseño y aplicación de una extensión de la plataforma de hardware abierto Arduino”

Rewriting and narrowing for constructor systems with call-time choice semantics

Non-confluent and non-terminating constructor-based term rewrite systems are useful for the purpose of specification and programming. In particular, existing functional logic languages use such kind of rewrite systems to define possibly non-strict non-deterministic functions. The semantics adopted for non-determinism is call-time choice, whose combination with non-strictness is a non trivial issue, addressed years ago from a semantic point of view with the Constructor-based Rewriting Logic (CRWL), a well-known semantic framework commonly accepted as suitable semantic basis of modern functional logic languages. A drawback of CRWL is that it does not come with a proper notion of one-step reduction, which would be very useful to understand and reason about how computations proceed. In this paper we develop thoroughly the theory for the first order version of letrewriting, a simple reduction notion close to that of classical term rewriting, but extended with a let-binding construction to adequately express the combination of call-time choice with non-strict semantics. Let-rewriting can be seen as a particular textual presentation of term graph rewriting. We investigate the properties of let-rewriting, most remarkably their equivalence with respect to a conservative extension of the CRWL-semantics coping with let-bindings, and we show by some case studies that having two interchangeable formal views (reduction/semantics) of the same language is a powerful reasoning tool. After that, we provide a notion of let-narrowing which is adequate for call-time choice as proved by soundness and completeness results of let-narrowing with respect to letre writing. Moreover, we relate those let-rewriting and let-narrowing relations (and hence CRWL) with ordinary term rewriting and narrowing, providing in particular soundness and completeness of let-rewriting with respect to term rewriting for a class of programs which are deterministic in a semantic sense

GPS deformation rates in the Bajo Segura basin (Eastern Betic Cordillera)

En este trabajo hemos cuantificado las tasas de deformación actual de la cuenca del Bajo Segura (NE del corredor de cizalla de la Bética oriental), a partir del análisis de una red GPS con 11 vértices geodésicos. Se han analizado los datos de cuatro campañas GPS entre junio de 1999 y enero de 2013, que han sido procesados con la versión 6.2 del software GIPSY-OASIS. Este software utiliza la técnica de posicionamiento puntual de precisión conocido por las siglas PPP. Se observa un acortamiento ~N-S en toda la cuenca de mayor magnitud en el sur, en la zona de falla del Bajo Segura, con valores que varían de oeste a este entre 0,73 y 0,24 mm/año. En el borde septentrional de la cuenca, en la zona de falla de Crevillente, los valores de acortamiento N-S son menores. Sin embargo, en esta falla se ha observado un movimiento lateral sinistrorso que, en la componente E-O, varía entre 0,44 y 0,75 mm/año.We estimate the present deformation rates of the Bajo Segura Basin (NE end of the Eastern Betic shear zone), from the analysis of a GPS network with 11 sites. We analyze the data from four observation campaigns carried out between June 1999 and January 2013.We used the 6.2 version of GIPSYOASIS software to process GPS data in Precise Point Positioning mode (PPP). It is observed a ~N-S shortening in the whole basin, higher in the south, along the Bajo Segura fault zone, with rates varying from West to East between 0.73 and 0.24 mm/yr. In the northern border of the basin, along the Crevillente fault zone, N-S deformation rates are lower. However, it is observed a left-lateral movement of this fault zone varying between 0.44 and 0.75 mm/yr in the E-W direction.Este trabajo ha sido financiado por los proyectos del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad AYA2010-15501 y CGL2011-30153-C02-02 y por el proyecto CSD2006-0041 (European Regional Development Fund-ERDF)

A genome-wide association study follow-up suggests a possible role for PPARG in systemic sclerosis susceptibility

Introduction: A recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) comprising a French cohort of systemic sclerosis (SSc) reported several non-HLA single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) showing a nominal association in the discovery phase. We aimed to identify previously overlooked susceptibility variants by using a follow-up strategy.<p></p> Methods: Sixty-six non-HLA SNPs showing a P value <10-4 in the discovery phase of the French SSc GWAS were analyzed in the first step of this study, performing a meta-analysis that combined data from the two published SSc GWASs. A total of 2,921 SSc patients and 6,963 healthy controls were included in this first phase. Two SNPs, PPARG rs310746 and CHRNA9 rs6832151, were selected for genotyping in the replication cohort (1,068 SSc patients and 6,762 healthy controls) based on the results of the first step. Genotyping was performed by using TaqMan SNP genotyping assays. Results: We observed nominal associations for both PPARG rs310746 (PMH = 1.90 × 10-6, OR, 1.28) and CHRNA9 rs6832151 (PMH = 4.30 × 10-6, OR, 1.17) genetic variants with SSc in the first step of our study. In the replication phase, we observed a trend of association for PPARG rs310746 (P value = 0.066; OR, 1.17). The combined overall Mantel-Haenszel meta-analysis of all the cohorts included in the present study revealed that PPARG rs310746 remained associated with SSc with a nominal non-genome-wide significant P value (PMH = 5.00 × 10-7; OR, 1.25). No evidence of association was observed for CHRNA9 rs6832151 either in the replication phase or in the overall pooled analysis.<p></p> Conclusion: Our results suggest a role of PPARG gene in the development of SSc