Psychometric properties of the questionnaire for needs of family members of patients hospitalized in critical units, abbreviated version

Indexación: Scopus; Scielo.El ingreso de una persona a una Unidad de Paciente Crítico genera efectos en su círculo familiar más cercano, siendo el acceso a la información y trato empático algunas de las necesidades de los familiares de los pacientes hospitalizados. El Critical Care Family Needs Inventory (CCFNI), versión breve, permite evaluar la satisfacción de necesidades de los familiares de pacientes hospitalizados en estas unidades y se considera una herramienta útil para obtener una visión de este grupo. Objetivo: Describir la adaptación cultural y evaluar las propiedades psicométricas del CCFNI, versión breve, en familiares de pacientes hospitalizados en Unidades de Cuidados Intensivos del Hospital Dr. Hernán Henríquez Aravena, Temuco, Chile. Material y método: Diseño de corte transversal. Se realizó la adaptación cultural del instrumento y luego se aplicó a 77 familiares, posterior a la firma del consentimiento informado. Se determinó validez de constructo y confiabilidad del instrumento. Resultados: Fueron excluidos los ítems 11 y 14. El análisis factorial exploratorio evidenció cuatro componentes cuyos alfa de Cronbach fueron 0,7; 0,7; 0,6 y 0,3. Conclusión: La traducción y adaptación realizada debe continuar su estudio psicométrico incorporando un número mayor de familiares de pacientes hospitalizados para confirmar la ex clusión de los ítems y comprobar su estructura multidimensional. Este instrumento constituye una herramienta para valorar las necesidades de familiares de pacientes hospitalizados en Unidades Críticas.The admission of a patient to the Intensive Care Unit has an effect on its inner family circle, the access to information and an empathic treatment being some of the needs of the relatives of the patient in this unit. The short version of the Critical Care Family Needs Inventory (CCFNI) allows to evaluate the satisfaction of those needs by the relatives of the patients in this units and it is considered a useful tool to obtain an overview of this group. Objective: To describe the cultural adaptations and to evaluate the psychometric properties of the short version of the CCFNI in hospitalized patients' relatives in Dr. Hernán Henríquez Aravena's Hospital, Temuco, Chile. Method: This research uses a cross-sectional survey design. The tool was first culturally adapted and then applied to 77 relatives during the time span of five months, after a written consent was provided. Validity of the construct and reliability of the tool are determined. Results: Items 11 and 14 were excluded. The exploratory factorial analysis showed four components whose Alphas of Cronbach were 0.7; 0.7; 0.6 and 0.3. Conclusion: The translation and adapted version applied must continue its psychometric study incorporating a bigger number of relatives of hospitalized patients to confirm the exclusion of items and to check its multidimensional structure. This instrument is a tool to value the needs of relatives of patients hospitalized in Critical Units.https://scielo.conicyt.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0717-95532017000300077&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=e

On the stability of the primordial closed string gas

We recast the study of a closed string gas in a toroidal container in the physical situation in which the single string density of states is independent of the volume because energy density is very high. This includes the gas for the well known Brandenberger-Vafa cosmological scenario. We describe the gas in the grandcanonical and microcanonical ensembles. In the microcanonical description, we find a result that clearly confronts the Brandenberger-Vafa calculation to get the specific heat of the system. The important point is that we use the same approach to the problem but a different regularization. By the way, we show that, in the complex temperature formalism, at the Hagedorn singularity, the analytic structure obtained from the so-called F-representation of the free energy coincides with the one computed using the S-representation.Comment: 20 pages and 1 figure. The final version that appeared in JHE

Ganado de doble propósito en El Nus

El nombre Ganado de Doble Propósito solo se ha difundido en las ultimas décadas; es tan antiguo como la domesticación de los bovinos porque de ellos se ha extraído leche y carne simultáneamente. Aproximadamente en 1977 el Instituto Colombiano Agropecuario (ICA) inicia la elaboración del Proyecto de Ganado de Doble propósito, considerando, entre otros, dos aspectos muy importantes: 1. La organización Mundial de la Salud y el Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, recomiendan 140 litros de leche por persona por afio y escasamente se llega a un consumo de 70 litros. Estas organizaciones aconsejan consumir 70 kilogramos de carne por persona por afio y solamente se llega a unos 25 kilogramos.Ganado de doble propósito-Ganaderia doble proposit

Flammability trends for a comprehensive array of cladding materials

The flammability of materials is a key component of modern cladding fires. Vertical flame spread is a complex phenomenon which is, amongst others, a function of thermal inertia, ignition temperature, and heat release. The recently published Cladding Materials Library contains the needed flammability data to help engineers perform fire risk assessments on buildings. Cladding fire research has previously generally focused on expensive and time consuming full-scale testing, or on the chemical composition, with little regard to the flammability or other performance metrics. This research shows common trends in the ignition and burning behaviour for cladding materials in a systematic bench-scale study using the Cladding Materials Library. The organic content is shown to be a poor indicator of the fire performance, as represented by the heat release rate. A simple and highly conservative model indicates the relative behaviour of a diverse range of cladding materials. This analysis supports competent engineers to select which specific buildings require further investigation based on performance, and to aid development of remediation solutions. The differences within categories of materials, e.g. high-pressure laminates, are large and thus the performance should be tailored for the specific building material. This work complements but does not replace full-scale system testing

Towards a better understanding of fire performance assessment of façade systems: current situation and a proposed new assessment framework

This manuscript presents tools and data that serve to enable an evaluation of the risk associated with vertical fire spread on buildings. A highly detailed context to cladding fires is described to unveil the complexity and magnitude of the problem and to identify gaps of information. An engineering framework is then developed which delivers required information that fills some of those gaps and that needs to be used towards achieving quantified fire performance. The data itself has been published as a publicly available database, entitled the Cladding Materials Library (www.claddingmaterialslibrary.com.au). This data can be used to support building fire risk assessments or as the basis for more in-depth research into façade fires. This paper presents the context of the data together with the competency framework necessary for upskilling building professionals to have the capacity to implement the engineering framework

Geology of La Reforma caldera complex, Baja California, Mexico

A new geological map at 1:50,000 scale of La Reforma Caldera Complex has been produced applying modern survey methodologies to volcanic areas. This map aims to represent a reliable and objective tool to understand the geological evolution of the region. La Reforma Caldera Complex is a Pleistocene nested caldera located in the central part of the Baja California peninsula, Mexico. The twelve formations defined within the Quaternary volcanic record were grouped into three phases (pre-caldera, caldera, and post-caldera). The pre-caldera phase (>1.35 Ma) is characterized by scattered eruptions, mostly occurred in submarine environment. The caldera phase (1.35–0.96 Ma) groups several distinct explosive and effusive eruptions that formed the present-day caldera depression. The post caldera phase includes scattered effusive eruptions (ended at 0.28 Ma) and resurgence, characterized by several hundred meters of uplift of the central block within the caldera depression

Predicting Survival after Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation in Myelofibrosis : Performance of the Myelofibrosis Transplant Scoring System (MTSS) and Development of a New Prognostic Model

Accurate prognostic tools are crucial to assess the risk/benefit ratio of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) in patients with myelofibrosis (MF). We aimed to evaluate the performance of the Myelofibrosis Transplant Scoring System (MTSS) and identify risk factors for survival in a multicenter series of 197 patients with MF undergoing allo-HCT. After a median follow-up of 3.1 years, 47% of patients had died, and the estimated 5-year survival rate was 51%. Projected 5-year risk of nonrelapse mortality and relapse incidence was 30% and 20%, respectively. Factors independently associated with increased mortality were a hematopoietic cell transplantation-specific comorbidity index (HCT-CI) ≥3 and receiving a graft from an HLA-mismatched unrelated donor or cord blood, whereas post-transplant cyclophosphamide (PT-Cy) was associated with improved survival. Donor type was the only parameter included in the MTSS model with independent prognostic value for survival. According to the MTSS, 3-year survival was 62%, 66%, 37%, and 17% for low-, intermediate-, high-, and very high-risk groups, respectively. By pooling together the low- and intermediate-risk groups, as well as the high- and very high-risk groups, we pinpointed 2 categories: standard risk and high risk (25% of the series). Three-year survival was 62% in standard-risk and 25% in high-risk categories (P <.001). We derived a risk score based on the 3 independent risk factors for survival in our series (donor type, HCT-CI, and PT-Cy). The corresponding 5-year survival for the low-, intermediate-, and high-risk categories was 79%, 55%, and 32%, respectively (P <.001). In conclusion, the MTSS model failed to clearly delineate 4 prognostic groups in our series but may still be useful to identify a subset of patients with poor outcome. We provide a simple prognostic scoring system for risk/benefit considerations before transplantation in patients with MF

Dragon-kings: mechanisms, statistical methods and empirical evidence

This introductory article presents the special Discussion and Debate volume "From black swans to dragon-kings, is there life beyond power laws?" published in Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics in May 2012. We summarize and put in perspective the contributions into three main themes: (i) mechanisms for dragon-kings, (ii) detection of dragon-kings and statistical tests and (iii) empirical evidence in a large variety of natural and social systems. Overall, we are pleased to witness significant advances both in the introduction and clarification of underlying mechanisms and in the development of novel efficient tests that demonstrate clear evidence for the presence of dragon-kings in many systems. However, this positive view should be balanced by the fact that this remains a very delicate and difficult field, if only due to the scarcity of data as well as the extraordinary important implications with respect to hazard assessment, risk control and predictability.Comment: 20 page

Large-scale compartment fires to develop a self-extinction design framework for mass timber—Part 1: Literature review and methodology

Fire safety remains a major challenge for engineered timber buildings. Their combustible nature challenges the design principles of compartmentation and structural integrity beyond burnout, which are inherent to the fire resistance framework. Therefore, self-extinction is critical for the fire-safe design of timber buildings. This paper is the first of a three-part series that seeks to establish the fundamental principles underpinning a design framework for self-extinction of engineered timber. The paper comprises: a literature review introducing the body of work developed at material and compartment scales; and the design of a large-scale testing methodology which isolates the fundamental phenomena to enable the development and validation of the required design framework. Research at the material scale has consolidated engineering principles to quantify self-extinction using external heat flux as a surrogate of the critical mass loss rate, and mass transfer or Damköhler numbers. At the compartment scale, further interdependent, complex phenomena influencing self-extinction occurrence have been demonstrated. Time-dependent phenomena include encapsulation failure, fall-off of charred lamellae and the burning of the movable fuel load, while thermal feedback is time-independent. The design of the testing methodology is described in reference to these fundamental phenomena