Novel Fast Catadioptric Objective with Wide Field of View

Using the Simultaneous Multiple Surface method in 2D (SMS2D), we present a fast catadioptric objective with a wide field of view (125°×96°designed for a microbolometer detector with 640×480 pixels and 25 microns pixel pitc

Predicting 30-Day Mortality for Patients With Acute Heart Failure in the Emergency Department: A Cohort Study.

Background: Physicians in the emergency department (ED) need additional tools to stratify patients with acute heart failure (AHF) according to risk. Objective: To predict mortality using data that are readily available at ED admission. Design: Prospective cohort study. Setting: 34 Spanish EDs. Participants: The derivation cohort included 4867 consecutive ED patients admitted during 2009 to 2011. The validation cohort comprised 3229 patients admitted in 2014. Measurements: 88 candidate risk factors and 30-day mortality. Results: Thirteen independent risk factors were identified in the derivation cohort and were combined into an overall score, the MEESSI-AHF (Multiple Estimation of risk based on the Emergency department Spanish Score In patients with AHF) score. This score predicted 30-day mortality with excellent discrimination (c-statistic, 0.836) and calibration (Hosmer-Lemeshow P = 0.99) and provided a steep gradient in 30-day mortality across risk groups (<2% for patients in the 2 lowest risk quintiles and 45% in the highest risk decile). These characteristics were confirmed in the validation cohort (c-statistic, 0.828). Multiple sensitivity analyses did not find important amounts of confounding or bias. Limitations: The study was confined to a single country. Participating EDs were not selected randomly. Many patients had missing data. Measurement of some risk factors was subjective. Conclusion: This tool has excellent discrimination and calibration and was validated in a different cohort from the one that was used to develop it. Physicians can consider using this tool to inform clinical decisions as further studies are done to determine whether the tool enhances physician decision making and improves patient outcomes. Primary Funding Source: Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spanish Ministry of Health; Fundació La Marató de TV3; and Catalonia Govern

Imaging systems application of multichannel configurations

While multichannel configurations are well established for non-imaging applications, they have not been used yet for imaging applications. In this paper we present for the first time some of multichannel designs for imaging systems. The multichannel comprises discontinuous optical sections which are called channels. The phase-space representation of the bundle of rays going from the object to the image is discontinuous between channels. This phase-space ray-bundle flow is divided in as many paths as channels there are but it is a single wavefront both at the source and the target. Typically, these multichannel systems are at least formed by three optical surfaces: two of them have discontinuities (either in the shape or in the shape derivative) while the last is a smooth one. Optical surfaces discontinuities cause at the phase space the wave front split in separate paths. The number of discontinuities is the same in the two first surfaces: Each channel is defined by the smooth surfaces in between discontinuities, so the surfaces forming each separate channel are all smooth. Aplanatic multichannel designs are also shown and used to explain the design procedure

Morphine Use in the ED and Outcomes of Patients With Acute Heart Failure A Propensity Score-Matching Analysis Based on the EAHFE Registry

OBJECTIVE: The objective was to determine the relationship between short-term mortality and intravenous morphine use in ED patients who received a diagnosis of acute heart failure (AHF). METHODS: Consecutive patients with AHF presenting to 34 Spanish EDs from 2011 to 2014 were eligible for inclusion. The subjects were divided into those with (M) or without IV morphine treatment (WOM) groups during ED stay. The primary outcome was 30-day all-cause mortality, and secondary outcomes were mortality at different intermediate time points, in-hospital mortality, and length of hospital stay. We generated a propensity score to match the M and WOM groups that were 1:1 according to 46 different epidemiological, baseline, clinical, and therapeutic factors. We investigated independent risk factors for 30-day mortality in patients receiving morphine. RESULTS: We included 6,516 patients (mean age, 81 [SD, 10] years; 56% women): 416 (6.4%) in the M and 6,100 (93.6%) in the WOM group. Overall, 635 (9.7%; M, 26.7%; WOM, 8.6%) died by day 30. After propensity score matching, 275 paired patients constituted each group. Patients receiving morphine had a higher 30-day mortality (55 [20.0%] vs 35 [12.7%] deaths; hazard ratio, 1.66; 95% CI, 1.09-2.54; P=.017). In patients receiving morphine, death was directly related to glycemia (P=.013) and inversely related to the baseline Barthel index and systolic BP (P=.021) at ED arrival (P=.021). Mortality was increased at every intermediate time point, although the greatest risk was at the shortest time (at 3 days: 22 [8.0%] vs 7 [2.5%] deaths; OR, 3.33; 95% CI, 1.40-7.93; P=.014). In-hospital mortality did not increase (39 [14.2%] vs 26 [9.1%] deaths; OR, 1.65; 95% CI, 0.97-2.82; P=.083) and LOS did not differ between groups (median [interquartile range] in M, 8 [7]; WOM, 8 [6]; P=.79). CONCLUSIONS: This propensity score-matched analysis suggests that the use of IV morphine in AHF could be associated with increased 30-day mortality.Peer reviewe

Employment generation by small firms in Spain

Despite the relevance in terms of policy, we still know little in Spain about where and by whom jobs are created, and how that is affecting the size distribution of firms. The main innovation of this paper is to use a rich database that overcomes the problems encountered by other firm-level studies to shed some light on the employment generation of small firms in Spain. We find that small firms contribute to employment disproportionately across all sectors of the economy although the difference between their employment and job creation share is largest in the manufacturing sector. The job creators in that sector are both new and established firms whereas only new small firms outperform their larger counterparts in the service sector. The large annual job creation of the small firm size class is shifting the firm size distribution towards the very small production units, although not uniformly across industries of different technology intensit

Jardins per a la salut

Facultat de Farmàcia, Universitat de Barcelona. Ensenyament: Grau de Farmàcia. Assignatura: Botànica farmacèutica. Curs: 2014-2015. Coordinadors: Joan Simon, Cèsar Blanché i Maria Bosch.Els materials que aquí es presenten són el recull de les fitxes botàniques de 128 espècies presents en el Jardí Ferran Soldevila de l’Edifici Històric de la UB. Els treballs han estat realitzats manera individual per part dels estudiants dels grups M-3 i T-1 de l’assignatura Botànica Farmacèutica durant els mesos de febrer a maig del curs 2014-15 com a resultat final del Projecte d’Innovació Docent «Jardins per a la salut: aprenentatge servei a Botànica farmacèutica» (codi 2014PID-UB/054). Tots els treballs s’han dut a terme a través de la plataforma de GoogleDocs i han estat tutoritzats pels professors de l’assignatura. L’objectiu principal de l’activitat ha estat fomentar l’aprenentatge autònom i col·laboratiu en Botànica farmacèutica. També s’ha pretès motivar els estudiants a través del retorn de part del seu esforç a la societat a través d’una experiència d’Aprenentatge-Servei, deixant disponible finalment el treball dels estudiants per a poder ser consultable a través d’una Web pública amb la possibilitat de poder-ho fer in-situ en el propi jardí mitjançant codis QR amb un smartphone