A multidimensional approach to the resilience in older adults despite COVID-19.

Researchers have mainly focused on aging risk factors and COVID-19 consequences. However, older adults have proved their ability to overcome adversities along their life. Resilience is a protective variable that dampens the impact of stress. Based on MacLeod’s et al. (2016) approach, we aimed to analyze the relationship between older adults’ resilience and COVID-19 related-stressors as well as their physical, mental, and social characteristics. Eight hundred eighty-nine people aged 60 and over participated in this study. Older participants, women, having better perceived health and not losing a loved one because of the virus were associated with more resilience. Moreover, higher levels of gratitude, personal growth, life purpose and lower levels of depression were associated with greater scores in resilience. This study offers a change of perspective in which aging is perceived from a positive viewpoint by focusing on easily accessible resources that may help older adults to cope with adverse situations.post-print913 K

iCanCloud: a flexible and scalable cloud infrastructure simulator

Simulation techniques have become a powerful tool for deciding the best starting conditions on pay-as-you-go scenarios. This is the case of public cloud infrastructures, where a given number and type of virtual machines (in short VMs) are instantiated during a specified time, being this reflected in the final budget. With this in mind, this paper introduces and validates iCanCloud, a novel simulator of cloud infrastructures with remarkable features such as flexibility, scalability, performance and usability. Furthermore, the iCanCloud simulator has been built on the following design principles: (1) it's targeted to conduct large experiments, as opposed to others simulators from literature; (2) it provides a flexible and fully customizable global hypervisor for integrating any cloud brokering policy; (3) it reproduces the instance types provided by a given cloud infrastructure; and finally, (4) it contains a user-friendly GUI for configuring and launching simulations, that goes from a single VM to large cloud computing systems composed of thousands of machines.This research was partially supported by the following projects: Spanish MEC project TESIS (TIN2009-14312-C02-01), and Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the grant TIN2010-16497.Publicad

Early Risk Factors for Obesity in the First 1000 Days-Relationship with Body Fat and BMI at 2 Years

Background: Obesity is defined as an excessive accumulation of body fat. Several early developmental factors have been identified which are associated with an increased risk of childhood obesity and increased adiposity in childhood. The primary objective of the present study is to analyse the effect of various early risk factors on Body Mass Index (BMI) and body fat percentage at 2 years of age. (2) Methods: A prospective cohort study design was used, with the sample consisting of 109 mother-child pairs from whom data were collected between early pregnancy and 2 years old. Adiposity was determined based on skinfold measurements using the Brooks and Siri formulae. Mean comparison tests (Student's t-test and ANOVAs) and multiple linear regression models were used to analyse the relationship between early programming factors and dependent variables. (3) Results: Maternal excess weight during early pregnancy (beta = 0.203, p = 0.026), gestational smoking (beta = 0.192, p = 0.036), and accelerated weight gain in the first 2 years (beta = - 0.269, p = 0.004) were significantly associated with high body fat percentage. Pre-pregnancy BMI and accelerated weight gain in the first 2 years were associated with high BMI z-score (beta = 0.174, p = 0.047 and beta = 0.417, p = 0.000 respectively). The cumulative effect of these variables resulted in high values compared to the baseline zero-factor group, with significant differences in BMI z-score (F = 8.640, p = 0.000) and body fat percentage (F = 5.402, p = 0.002) when three factors were present. (4) Conclusions: The presence of several early risk factors related to obesity in infancy was significantly associated with higher BMI z-score and body fat percentage at 2 years of age. The presence of more than one of these variables was also associated with higher adiposity at 2 years of age. Early prevention strategies should address as many of these factors as possible.This study was supported by public funds, the ITI call (integrated territorial investment), developed by the Health Department of the Andalusian Government. The project has been 80% co-financed by funds from the FEDER operational program of Andalusia 2014-2020. Documen

Interventions in the first 1000 days to prevent childhood obesity: a systematic review and quantitative content analysis

Background: Childhood obesity poses a global health challenge. In recent years, there has been an increase in interventions that begin in pregnancy, putting the concept of early programming and early risk factors into practice. The present study aims to update the findings regarding interventions in the first 1000 days of life. Methods: A systematic review based on the PRISMA guidelines was carried out in PubMed, WoS, Scopus and CINAHL to obtain the articles to be analysed. We included those studies published between 2016 and 2021. Human interventions that started within the first 1000 days of life and acted on at least one programming factor were included. Once selected, coding and quantitative content analysis was carried out to obtain a profile of the interventions during the first 1000 days. Results: From all screened articles, 51 unique interventions, which met the selection criteria, were included. The majority of interventions (81%) took place in high-income areas. Almost all (86%) were targeted at the general population. The majority (54%) started in the second trimester of pregnancy. A clear majority (61%) ended at the time of birth. 44% of the interventions included all pregnant women. Only 48% of these interventions were focused on improving the nutritional status of the offspring in the short term. Most interventions collected the baby's weight at birth (68%). Conclusions: It can be concluded that current interventions are not covering as many aspects as they should. Future research should be conducted more frequently in developing countries and target disadvantaged groups. These interventions should include all pregnant women, regardless of their nutritional status, aiming to cover as many programming factors as possible and extending through the first 1000 days of life, with body mass index or skinfolds as measures of effectiveness during this period.11 página

Collisional-inhomogeneity-induced generation of matter-wave dark solitons

We propose an experimentally relevant protocol for the controlled generation of matter-wave dark solitons in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). In particular, using direct numerical simulations, we show that by switching-on a spatially inhomogeneous (step-like) change of the s-wave scattering length, it is possible to generate a controllable number of dark solitons in a quasi-one-dimensional BEC. A similar phenomenology is also found in the two-dimensional setting of "disk-shaped" BECs but, as the solitons are subject to the snaking instability, they decay into vortex structures. A detailed investigation of how the parameters involved affect the emergence and evolution of solitons and vortices is provided.Comment: 8 pages, 5 Figures, Physics Letters A (in press

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-Aim of study: Soil degradation in agricultural areas is a widespread problem. In this framework, a data validation methodology is pre-sented, including a study of the spatial resolution of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) measurements, the calculation of erosion/deposition models, and the contribution of dual frequency and low-cost single frequency GNSS receivers. Area of study: A test olive grove in SE Spain.Material and methods: The study is based on three observation campaigns, between 2016 and 2018, using different GNSS receivers and working modes. The comparison between different surveys provide the volumetric variation over the analyzed period. Main results: Considering the dual-frequency receiver, there was no statistically significant difference between the means and the va-riances from 1.5 m and from 4.5 m data resolution at the 0.05 significance level. In order to estimate vertical differences from successive GNSS campaigns a differential digital elevation approach was applied. Although the differences depended on the zone of the test area and they changed along the monitoring period, the erosion rate could be catalogued as very low. The dual-frequency receiver satisfied the vertical centimetric precision limits for high accurate Digital Elevation Model (DEM), making it a reliable and accurate option to validate erosion studies in small areas.Research highlights: The results have allowed the characterization of multi-annual spatial redistribution of the topsoil at local scale, being of great help to design future prevention actions for the “tillage erosion” in olive grove environments. However, more tests are needed to guarantee the feasibility of low-cost receivers.Center for Advanced Studies in Earth Sciences, RNM282 Research Group (Junta de Andalucía), PAIUJA 2019/2

Is GNSS real-time positioning a reliable option to validate erosion studies at olive grove environments?

Aim of study: Soil degradation in agricultural areas is a widespread problem. In this framework, a data validation methodology is presented, including a study of the spatial resolution of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) measurements, the calculation of erosion/deposition models, and the contribution of dual frequency and low-cost single frequency GNSS receivers.Area of study: A test olive grove in SE Spain.Material and methods: The study is based on three observation campaigns, between 2016 and 2018, using different GNSS receivers and working modes. The comparison between different surveys provide the volumetric variation over the analyzed period.Main results: Considering the dual-frequency receiver, there was no statistically significant difference between the means and the variances from 1.5 m and from 4.5 m data resolution at the 0.05 significance level. In order to estimate vertical differences from successive GNSS campaigns a differential digital elevation approach was applied. Although the differences depended on the zone of the test area and they changed along the monitoring period, the erosion rate could be catalogued as very low. The dual-frequency receiver satisfied the vertical centimetric precision limits for high accurate Digital Elevation Model (DEM), making it a reliable and accurate option to validate erosion studies in small areas.Research highlights: The results have allowed the characterization of multi-annual spatial redistribution of the topsoil at local scale, being of great help to design future prevention actions for the “tillage erosion” in olive grove environments. However, more tests are needed to guarantee the feasibility of low-cost receivers

Stability of Attractive Bose-Einstein Condensates in a Periodic Potential

Using a standing light wave trap, a stable quasi-one-dimensional attractive dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensate can be realized. In a mean-field approximation, this phenomenon is modeled by the cubic nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with attractive nonlinearity and an elliptic function potential of which a standing light wave is a special case. New families of stationary solutions are presented. Some of these solutions have neither an analog in the linear Schr\"odinger equation nor in the integrable nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. Their stability is examined using analytic and numerical methods. Trivial-phase solutions are experimentally stable provided they have nodes and their density is localized in the troughs of the potential. Stable time-periodic solutions are also examined.Comment: 12 pages, 18 figure

A decade of GRB follow-up by BOOTES in Spain (2003-2013)

This article covers ten years of GRB follow-ups by the Spanish BOOTES stations: 71 follow-ups providing 23 detections. Follow-ups by BOOTES-1B from 2005 to 2008 were given in the previous article, and are here reviewed, updated, and include additional detection data points as the former article merely stated their existence. The all-sky cameras CASSANDRA have not yet detected any GRB optical afterglows, but limits are reported where available

Stability of dark solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in an optical lattice

We investigate the stability of dark solitons (DSs) in an effectively one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of the magnetic parabolic trap and an optical lattice (OL). The analysis is based on both the full Gross-Pitaevskii equation and its tight-binding approximation counterpart (discrete nonlinear Schr{\"o}dinger equation). We find that DSs are subject to weak instabilities with an onset of instability mainly governed by the period and amplitude of the OL. The instability, if present, sets in at large times and it is characterized by quasi-periodic oscillations of the DS about the minimum of the parabolic trap.Comment: Typo fixed in Eq. (1): cos^2 -> sin^