Modelling background air pollution exposure in urban environments: Implications for epidemiological research

Background pollution represents the lowest levels of ambient air pollution to which the population is chronically exposed, but few studies have focused on thoroughly characterizing this regime. This study uses clustering statistical techniques as a modelling approach to characterize this pollution regime while deriving reliable information to be used as estimates of exposure in epidemiological studies. The background levels of four key pollutants in five urban areas of Andalusia (Spain) were characterized over an 11-year period (2005e2015) using four widely-known clustering methods. For each pollutant data set, the first (lowest) cluster representative of the background regime was studied using finite mixture models, agglomerative hierarchical clustering, hidden Markov models (hmm) and k-means. Clustering method hmm outperforms the rest of the techniques used, providing important estimates of exposures related to background pollution as its mean, acuteness and time incidence values in the ambient air for all the air pollutants and sites studied

Impact of soft-hydrothermal pre-treatments on the olive mill solid waste characteristics and its subsequent amaerobic digestion

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a soft-hydrothermal pre-treatment (SHP) on olive mill solid waste (OMSW) and its subsequent anaerobic digestion (AD). OMSW was pre-treated in an autoclave at temperatures of 121 ºC and 133 ºC and excess pressures of 1.1 and 2.1 bars, respectively at heating times of 15, 20 and 30 minutes. The digestibility of pre-treated and untreated OMSW was determined in terms of methane potential through using biochemical methane potentials tests (BMP). An important solubilisation of high valuable compounds such us hydroxytyrosol, and 3,4-dihydroxyphenylglycol was observed after pre-treatments. SHP showed a significant reduction on fiber length and width (p < 0.05). A higher polysaccharides solubilisation was observed in treatment at 121 ºC comparing with that observed at 133 ºC. SHP carried out at 121 ºC, 1.1 bar (30 min) (pre-treatment A1), allowed obtaining the highest methane yield (380 ± 5 mL CH4/g VS), which was 12.3% higher than that obtained for untreated OMSW. Pearson correlation (PEC) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were carried out. PEC showed a positive correlation with phenol vanillic acid and PCA grouped pre-treatment A1 with polysaccharides solubilization. The influence of the SHP conditions on the AD of OMSW was assessed through the monitoring of process performance and calculation of kinetic parameters by using the Transference Function model

Modelling fish habitat preference with a genetic algorithm-optimized Takagi-Sugeno model based on pairwise comparisons

Species-environment relationships are used for evaluating the current status of target species and the potential impact of natural or anthropogenic changes of their habitat. Recent researches reported that the results are strongly affected by the quality of a data set used. The present study attempted to apply pairwise comparisons to modelling fish habitat preference with Takagi-Sugeno-type fuzzy habitat preference models (FHPMs) optimized by a genetic algorithm (GA). The model was compared with the result obtained from the FHPM optimized based on mean squared error (MSE). Three independent data sets were used for training and testing of these models. The FHPMs based on pairwise comparison produced variable habitat preference curves from 20 different initial conditions in the GA. This could be partially ascribed to the optimization process and the regulations assigned. This case study demonstrates applicability and limitations of pairwise comparison-based optimization in an FHPM. Future research should focus on a more flexible learning process to make a good use of the advantages of pairwise comparisons

Efficiency analysis of the visibility of Latin American universities and their impact on the ranking web

The study analyzes the factors that contribute to the technical efficiency of the visibility of the universities included in the Top100 of the Latin American Universities Ranking Web published by Webometrics database in January, 2017. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used to calculate the contributions of input variables to efficiency. As data sources for inputs, the study considers the academic data published on the web of each university, the content and profiles displayed from Google Scholar (GS), data by university published in ResearchGate as a scientific network, and finally, data from social networks as Twitter and Facebook accounts of the respective institutions. The postgraduate offer, visibility in GS, and the use of scientific and social networks contribute favorably to the web positioning of Latin American universities

The European Solar Telescope

The European Solar Telescope (EST) is a project aimed at studying the magnetic connectivity of the solar atmosphere, from the deep photosphere to the upper chromosphere. Its design combines the knowledge and expertise gathered by the European solar physics community during the construction and operation of state-of-the-art solar telescopes operating in visible and near-infrared wavelengths: the Swedish 1m Solar Telescope, the German Vacuum Tower Telescope and GREGOR, the French Télescope Héliographique pour l'Étude du Magnétisme et des Instabilités Solaires, and the Dutch Open Telescope. With its 4.2 m primary mirror and an open configuration, EST will become the most powerful European ground-based facility to study the Sun in the coming decades in the visible and near-infrared bands. EST uses the most innovative technological advances: the first adaptive secondary mirror ever used in a solar telescope, a complex multi-conjugate adaptive optics with deformable mirrors that form part of the optical design in a natural way, a polarimetrically compensated telescope design that eliminates the complex temporal variation and wavelength dependence of the telescope Mueller matrix, and an instrument suite containing several (etalon-based) tunable imaging spectropolarimeters and several integral field unit spectropolarimeters. This publication summarises some fundamental science questions that can be addressed with the telescope, together with a complete description of its major subsystems

The European Solar Telescope

The European Solar Telescope (EST) is a project aimed at studying the magnetic connectivity of the solar atmosphere, from the deep photosphere to the upper chromosphere. Its design combines the knowledge and expertise gathered by the European solar physics community during the construction and operation of state-of-the-art solar telescopes operating in visible and near-infrared wavelengths: the Swedish 1m Solar Telescope, the German Vacuum Tower Telescope and GREGOR, the French Télescope Héliographique pour l’Étude du Magnétisme et des Instabilités Solaires, and the Dutch Open Telescope. With its 4.2 m primary mirror and an open configuration, EST will become the most powerful European ground-based facility to study the Sun in the coming decades in the visible and near-infrared bands. EST uses the most innovative technological advances: the first adaptive secondary mirror ever used in a solar telescope, a complex multi-conjugate adaptive optics with deformable mirrors that form part of the optical design in a natural way, a polarimetrically compensated telescope design that eliminates the complex temporal variation and wavelength dependence of the telescope Mueller matrix, and an instrument suite containing several (etalon-based) tunable imaging spectropolarimeters and several integral field unit spectropolarimeters. This publication summarises some fundamental science questions that can be addressed with the telescope, together with a complete description of its major subsystems

International nosocomial infection control consortium (INICC) report, data summary of 36 countries, for 2004-2009

The results of a surveillance study conducted by the International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) from January 2004 through December 2009 in 422 intensive care units (ICUs) of 36 countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe are reported. During the 6-year study period, using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN; formerly the National Nosocomial Infection Surveillance system [NNIS]) definitions for device-associated health care-associated infections, we gathered prospective data from 313,008 patients hospitalized in the consortium's ICUs for an aggregate of 2,194,897 ICU bed-days. Despite the fact that the use of devices in the developing countries' ICUs was remarkably similar to that reported in US ICUs in the CDC's NHSN, rates of device-associated nosocomial infection were significantly higher in the ICUs of the INICC hospitals; the pooled rate of central line-associated bloodstream infection in the INICC ICUs of 6.8 per 1,000 central line-days was more than 3-fold higher than the 2.0 per 1,000 central line-days reported in comparable US ICUs. The overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia also was far higher (15.8 vs 3.3 per 1,000 ventilator-days), as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (6.3 vs. 3.3 per 1,000 catheter-days). Notably, the frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates to imipenem (47.2% vs 23.0%), Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (76.3% vs 27.1%), Escherichia coli isolates to ceftazidime (66.7% vs 8.1%), Staphylococcus aureus isolates to methicillin (84.4% vs 56.8%), were also higher in the consortium's ICUs, and the crude unadjusted excess mortalities of device-related infections ranged from 7.3% (for catheter-associated urinary tract infection) to 15.2% (for ventilator-associated pneumonia). Copyright © 2012 by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Calidad de enseñanza y supervisión instruccional II : capítulo 3

Adaptar al contexto educativo español el sistema para el análisis de las Conferencias de supervisión de Heidelbach. Establecer la fiabilidad del sistema en base al acuerdo entre una pareja de observadores. Sugerir las bases para la elaboración de un manual de codificación de la conducta supervisora. 13 Conferencias de supervisión entre profesores supervisores y alumnos de Escuela Universitaria de formación de profesorado de EGB de Sevilla. Esta investigación utiliza una metodología observacional para describir la conducta de supervisión en las entrevistas con los alumnos en prácticas de Magisterio. La codificación de las entrevistas se realizó con el sistema de Heidelbach a partir de las transcripciones sacadas de las grabaciones en casetes. Cada entrevista fue analizada por dos codificadores, de forma que se pudo hallar la fiabilidad de la codificación mediante el coeficiente de acuerdo entre observadores. El sistema categorial para describir la conducta supervisora instruccional, es el instrumento utilizado en esta investigación para codificar las entrevistas de supervisión, fue creado por Ruth Heidelbach. Para esta investigación fue adaptado utilizando categorías para clasificar la conducta verbal. El análisis de la conducta verbal en las entrevistas de supervisión lo realizaron dos codificadores mediante el sistema categorial de Heidelbach. La fiabilidad de la codificación se realizó mediante el coeficiente de correlación de rango 'TAU' de Kendall. La codificación se realiza mediante unidades de pensamiento, y en cada unidad existirá una categoría del área operativa y una o más substantiva. A un nivel de confianza de 0.05, se admite que ha habido una correlación significativa entre los codificadores en las cinco cintas o transcripciones de entrenamiento. Porcentajes de ocurrencia de las operaciones y áreas substantivas: 65,29 por ciento del total de categorías de la dimensión operacional, para las operaciones descriptivas. La subcategoría clasificación, obtuvo el mayor porcentaje dentro de aquella. Lo mismo ocurre en las operaciónes focalizadoras, en las que apareció un 28,81 por ciento. Las operaciones descriptivas se dieron en un 5,9 por ciento de los casos. Respecto al contenido, el de mayor frecuencia, 18,5 por ciento, se ha referido al modo de impartir la enseñanza. Después le sigue la categoría estructura psicológica de los alumnos, con un 15,04 por ciento del total. Determinación de esquemas y patrones de comportamiento supervisor para su estudio y mejora. El sistema categorial de Ruth Heidelbach puede utilizarse como instrumento de investigación a la luz de distintas teorías de la supervisión y como criterio en futuras investigaciones. Las transcripciones y su análisis pueden servir para la formación de supervisores.AndalucíaES

Calidad de enseñanza y supervisión instruccional II : capítulo 2

Se parte del supuesto de que el conocimiento de las actitudes ante la enseñanza, tanto de profesores como de alumnos de Escuelas Universitarias, es importante para establecer mejores relaciones y un cambio en las mismas. Por tanto es preciso conocer la correlación de aquellos con los profesores, tutores o alumnos. No ha existido diseño muestral. Se ha escogido una muestra diferente para cada uno de los objetivos. Los sujetos que la componen participan voluntariamente. H1= 284 n. y H2= 135 n.. Esta investigación tiene un carácter exploratorio únicamente. Tras la aplicación del TRSD a los cuatro grupos experimentales, se ha hallado la correlación entre profesores y alumnos, respecto del orden de aceptación de cada una de las alternativas que se ofrecen a una situación docente determinada. Cada alternativa representa una dimensión, esquema o tendencia de enseñanza: A. Enseñanza directa versus indirecta. B. Empático versus autodirigido. C. Control objetivo versus subjetivo. D. Enseñanza tradicional versus innovadora. El test de reacción a situaciones docentes. TRSD de J. Hough y E.J. Amidas. El contraste de las dos hipótesis declaradas en este estudio se realizó a través del coeficiente de correlación de rango TAU de Kendall. De las 192 opciones de los 48 ítems del TRSD, profesores tutores de colegios de Sevilla y alumnos de las Escuelas Universitarias de Magisterio de Sevilla coincidieron en los rangos ordenados de sus respuestas en 56 opciones de 36 ítems. En las respuestas de los profesores universitarios y alumnos de Cádiz, se obtuvo correlación perfecta en las ordenaciones de 36 opciones sobre 31 ítems. Finalmente existió coincidencia entre los profesores y alumnos de Sevilla y los profesores y alumnos de Cádiz en 9 de los 48 ítems. Sólo en la opción D ha habido una tendencia clara hacia una aptitud muy innovadora de la enseñanza en ambas muestras. Se rechaza, aunque no totalmente, la primera hipótesis planteada, porque no ha habido correlación significativa en cada una de las ordenaciones de los ítems, de parte de la muestra de Sevilla. Lo mismo ocurre con la segunda hipótesis de la muestra de Cádiz. En un futuro, los autores proponen que se podría establecer una proceso de entrenamiento, en el que el TRSD sería utilizado para diagnosticar la actuación del alumno, analizada luego con el sistema de Flanders.AndalucíaES