The level of provision of specialist palliative care services in Scotland: an international benchmarking study

Objectives: Comparative benchmarking of specialist palliative care (SPC) services across jurisdictions can be used to assess the adequacy of provision. Published in 2016, the Scottish Atlas of Palliative Care unlocks the possibility of benchmarking Scotland’s provision against other European Union (EU) countries. Our objectives were to describe the provision of SPC services in Scotland and compare this with other EU countries, assessing coverage against European norms. Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of data collected as part for the Scottish Atlas by structured telephone (n=33) or online (n=3) survey with informants from 14 territorial health boards and 15 hospices who provided information about SPC services in their locality. National-level Scottish data were compared with data from other EU countries allowing ranking for each service type and service coverage as calculated against European Association for Palliative Care norms. Results: Scotland had a total of 23 SPC inpatient units containing 349 beds, 27 SPC hospital support teams and 38 SPC home care teams. Relative to other EU countries, Scotland ranked seventh for provision of SPC inpatient units and hospital support teams, and fifth for home care teams. Coverage for these services was 85%, 100% and 72%, respectively. Conclusion: Scotland is positioned among the top 10 EU countries for the level of provision of SPC services. National policy in Scotland has focused on the delivery of palliative care at home or in a homely setting. These data support a focus on developing services in community settings to meet Scotland’s policy ambitions

Implementation of Video Game Character Visual Effects Final Degree Work Report

Treball final de Grau en Disseny i Desenvolupament de Videojocs. Codi: VJ1241. Curs acadèmic: 2021/2022This document contains the report of the Video Game Design and Development Final Degree Project by Miguel Ferrer Carrasco. It consists of the development and implementation of six different stylized video game visual effects (VFX) in the game engine Unity 3D by using both procedural and handmade techniques. The effects implemented in this work are intended to serve as working assets for an action-RPG or fighting 3D video game, being reproducible and parameterized for their use in other projects

E2 transitions and quadrupole moments in the E(5) symmetry

E2 transitions and quadrupole moments are studied in the recently proposed E~5! symmetry by using the intrinsic state formalism. It is shown that the values of these magnitudes can be obtained for the different bands to higher order in the boson number N by projecting the intrinsic state on g and b variables. The formalism allows to find easily the dependence of those magnitudes on the structure parameter of the quadrupole operator, x.Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica PB98-111

Unsupervised Intrusion Detection with Cross-Domain Artificial Intelligence Methods

Cybercrime is a major concern for corporations, business owners, governments and citizens, and it continues to grow in spite of increasing investments in security and fraud prevention. The main challenges in this research field are: being able to detect unknown attacks, and reducing the false positive ratio. The aim of this research work was to target both problems by leveraging four artificial intelligence techniques. The first technique is a novel unsupervised learning method based on skip-gram modeling. It was designed, developed and tested against a public dataset with popular intrusion patterns. A high accuracy and a low false positive rate were achieved without prior knowledge of attack patterns. The second technique is a novel unsupervised learning method based on topic modeling. It was applied to three related domains (network attacks, payments fraud, IoT malware traffic). A high accuracy was achieved in the three scenarios, even though the malicious activity significantly differs from one domain to the other. The third technique is a novel unsupervised learning method based on deep autoencoders, with feature selection performed by a supervised method, random forest. Obtained results showed that this technique can outperform other similar techniques. The fourth technique is based on an MLP neural network, and is applied to alert reduction in fraud prevention. This method automates manual reviews previously done by human experts, without significantly impacting accuracy

A beyond mean field study of Bose gases in a double-well potential with a Feshbach resonance

The Bose-Hubbard model coupled to a Feshbach resonance is studied. Quantum phase transitions are analyzed within a beyond mean field framework in order to get finite size corrections to the simple mean field approach. Analytical results for the ground state energy and the first few energy gaps are presented

Green Chemistry in Protected Horticulture: The Use of Peroxyacetic Acid as a Sustainable Strategy

Global reduction of chemical deposition into the environment is necessary. In protected horticulture, different strategies with biodegradable products are used to control pathogens. This review presents the available tools, especially for the management of protected horticultural species, including vegetables and ornamental plants. An analysis of the potential for degradable products that control pathogens and also encourage other productive factors, such as oxygen in the root system, is presented. Biosecurity in fertigation management of protected horticulture is conducted by using peroxyacetic acid mixtures that serve three basic principles: first, the manufacture of these products does not involve polluting processes; second, they have the same function as other chemicals, and third, after use and management there is no toxic residue left in the environment. The sustainability of protected horticulture depends on the development and introduction of technologies for implementation in the field

A "quick look" at ultrafast ablation using fs-resolved phase-change microscopy

A pump-probe phase-change microscope with fs temporal resolution has been used to understand the transformation induced in the sample surface as a consequence of laser-matter interaction.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Análisis de las reformas introducidas por la Ley 7/2012, de prevención y lucha contra el fraude fiscal

La Ley 7/2012, de 29 de octubre, de modificación de la normativa tributaria y de adecuación de la normativa financiera para la intensificación de las actuaciones en la prevención y lucha contra el fraude fiscal (conocida como la Ley de Prevención del Fraude Fiscal) ha sido publicada en el Boletín Oficial del Estado el pasado 30 de octubre de 2012, con entrada en vigor el día 31 del mismo mes. La Ley 7/2012 entrará en vigor a los 20 días de su publicación (19 de noviembre) y resultará de aplicación a todos los pagos efectuados desde esa fecha, incluso si se refieren a operaciones concertadas con anterioridad al establecimiento de dicha limitación. La ley se estructura en siete artículos, dos disposiciones adicionales y cinco disposiciones finales. En este artículo se analizan las reformas introducidas que afectan a la Ley General Tributaria, al Impuesto sobre la Renta de las Personas Físicas, al Impuesto sobre el Valor Añadido, al Impuesto General Indirecto Canario, al Impuesto sobre Sociedades, y en menor medida, al Impuesto sobre Transmisiones Patrimoniales y Actos Jurídicos Documentados, régimen fiscal de las cooperativas y Ley General Presupuestaria. Además, se introduce una norma no estrictamente tributaria relativa a la limitación de los pagos en efectivo