Pareto and Boltzmann-Gibbs behaviors in a deterministic multi-agent system

A deterministic system of interacting agents is considered as a model for economic dynamics. The dynamics of the system is described by a coupled map lattice with near neighbor interactions. The evolution of each agent results from the competition between two factors: the agent's own tendency to grow and the environmental influence that moderates this growth. Depending on the values of the parameters that control these factors, the system can display Pareto or Boltzmann-Gibbs statistical behaviors in its asymptotic dynamical regime. The regions where these behaviors appear are calculated on the space of parameters of the system. Other statistical properties, such as the mean wealth, the standard deviation, and the Gini coefficient characterizing the degree of equity in the wealth distribution are also calculated on the space of parameters of the system.Comment: 9 pages, 9 color .eps figures, submitted to Physica

Evolución del perfil comunicacional de los médicos residentes de medicina de familia

ObjetivoConocer cómo evolucionan en los residentes de medicina de familia las habilidades de relación con los pacientes, al comienzo y al final de su tercer año de residencia, cuando atienden a problemas de salud comunes en su especialidad.DiseñoEstudio cuasi-experimental (antesdespués), multicéntrico, de ámbito nacional. Un total de 193 médicos residentes de tercer año de medicina familiar de 8 unidades docentes, que realizaron su residencia entre 1996–1999. Durante este período los residentes realizaron las actividades formativas y asistenciales habituales que marca el Programa Nacional de la Especialidad. Se valoraron 6 escenarios clínicos videograbados con pacientes estandarizados (3 al inicio del tercer año y 3 al finalizar) mediante el cuestionario GATHA-RES. Análisis estadístico descriptivo, bivariado y multivariante.ResultadosSe evaluó un total de 1.024 entrevistas. El tiempo empleado con cada paciente disminuye significativamente al finalizar la residencia; se observa una relación directamente proporcional entre el tiempo de consulta y las puntuaciones obtenidas (p < 0,05). Se detectan mejorías en los aspectos formales y organizativos de la consulta. Por el contrario, las habilidades relacionadas con la exploración de los aspectos personales y contextuales de la dolencia, así como las habilidades negociadoras, empeoran al finalizar el estudio. Las variables que mejor predicen el perfil comunicacional de los residentes fueron: edad (inversamente), duración de la entrevista, formación del tutor en entrevista clínica y unidad docente.ConclusionesLos residentes aprenden a acortar el tiempo de consulta en detrimento de habilidades de comunicación básicas para la realización de una correcta asistencia a los problemas de salud de sus pacientes. Estos resultados sugieren la necesidad de cambios sustanciales en la formación de los médicos residentes de medicina de familia en España.AimsTo study the development of patient relation skills, as used during interviews with patients for health problems that are common within their specialty, in family medicine residents during the third year of their residency program.MethodsQuasi-experimental (before-after), national-level, multicenter study. The participants were 193 third-year residents in family medicine at 8 training units who were trained between 1996 and 1999. During this period all residents participated in the usual training and clinical activities included in the National Plan for this specialty. The GATHA-RES questionnaire was used to evaluated six clinical scenarios in video recordings of encounters with standardized patients (3 at the start of the third year and 3 at the end of the third year). Descriptive, bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses were used.ResultsA total of 1,024 interviews were analyzed. The time spent with each patient decreased significantly at the end of the residency program; the duration of the visit was directly proportional to the score on the GATHA-RES questionnaire (p < 0.05). Improvements were seen in formal and organizational aspects of the interview. In contrast, skills related with the exploration of personal and contextual aspects of the problem, and negotiating skills, were worse at the end of the study. The variables that best predicted residents’ communicational profile were age (inverse relation), duration of the interview, training of the tutor in clinical interviewing, and teaching unit.ConclusionsResidents learn to shorten the duration of the visit to the detriment of communication skills that are basic to appropriate care for their patients’ health problems. These results suggest the need for substantial changes in the training of family medicine residents in Spain

O-GlcNAcylation enhances CPS1 catalytic efficiency for ammonia and promotes ureagenesis

Artículo escrito por un elevado número de autores, solo se referencian el que aparece en primer lugar, el nombre del grupo de colaboración, si le hubiere, y los autores pertenecientes a la UAMLife-threatening hyperammonemia occurs in both inherited and acquired liver diseases affecting ureagenesis, the main pathway for detoxification of neurotoxic ammonia in mammals. Protein O-GlcNAcylation is a reversible and nutrient-sensitive post-translational modification using as substrate UDP-GlcNAc, the end-product of hexosamine biosynthesis pathway. Here we show that increased liver UDP-GlcNAc during hyperammonemia increases protein O-GlcNAcylation and enhances ureagenesis. Mechanistically, O-GlcNAcylation on specific threonine residues increased the catalytic efficiency for ammonia of carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 (CPS1), the rate-limiting enzyme in ureagenesis. Pharmacological inhibition of O-GlcNAcase, the enzyme removing O-GlcNAc from proteins, resulted in clinically relevant reductions of systemic ammonia in both genetic (hypomorphic mouse model of propionic acidemia) and acquired (thioacetamide-induced acute liver failure) mouse models of liver diseases. In conclusion, by fine-tuned control of ammonia entry into ureagenesis, hepatic O-GlcNAcylation of CPS1 increases ammonia detoxification and is a novel target for therapy of hyperammonemia in both genetic and acquired diseasesThis work was supported by grants of Fondazione Telethon Italy (to N.B.‐P.), MIUR (PRIN2017 to N.B.‐P.), of the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant 320030_176088 to J.H.), of the US National Institutes of Health grants (R21NS091654 and R01NS100979 both to G.S.L.), of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-105344RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 toL.R.D. and E.R.), and by a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award (110061to D.M.F.v.A.

Clustering Main Concepts from e-Mails

E–mail is one of the most common ways to communicate, assuming, in some cases, up to 75% of a company’s communication, in which every employee spends about 90 minutes a day in e–mail tasks such as filing and deleting. This paper deals with the generation of clusters of relevant words from E–mail texts. Our approach consists of the application of text mining techniques and, later, data mining techniques, to obtain related concepts extracted from sent and received messages. We have developed a new clustering algorithm based on neighborhood, which takes into account similarity values among words obtained in the text mining phase. The potential of these applications is enormous and only a few companies, mainly large organizations, have invested in this project so far, taking advantage of employees’s knowledge in future decisions

Spreading fronts of wetting liquid droplets: microscopic simulations and universal fluctuations

We have used kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) simulations of a lattice gas to study front fluctuations in the spreading of a non-volatile liquid droplet onto a solid substrate. Our results are consistent with a diffusive growth law for the radius of the precursor layer, $R \sim t^{\delta}$, with $\delta \approx 1/2$ in all the conditions considered for temperature and substrate wettability, in good agreement with previous studies. The fluctuations of the front exhibit kinetic roughening properties with exponent values which depend on temperature $T$, but become $T$-independent for sufficiently high $T$. Moreover, strong evidences of intrinsic anomalous scaling have been found, characterized by different values of the roughness exponent at short and large length scales. Although such a behavior differs from the scaling properties of the one-dimensional Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class, the front covariance and the probability distribution function of front fluctuations found in our kMC simulations do display KPZ behavior, agreeing with simulations of a continuum height equation proposed in this context. However, this equation does not feature intrinsic anomalous scaling, at variance with the discrete model.Comment: 15 pages and 14 figures. To be published in PR

Testing edible mushrooms to inhibit the pancreatic lipase activity by an in vitro digestion model

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Palanisamy, M. Testing edible mushrooms to inhibit the pancreatic lipase activity by an in vitro digestion model (2012) International Journal of Food Science and Technology, 47 (5), pp. 1004-1010., which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2621.2011.02934.x. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archivingOne of the strategies in prevention or treatment of obesity is altering metabolism of lipids by inhibition of dietary fat absorption. The extracts obtained with methanol, water and methanol:water (1:1) from 21 mushroom species were screened as potential sources of pancreatic lipase (PL) inhibitors using a standardised in vitro test. Lepiota procera methanol:water (1:1) extracts showed the highest inhibition activity closely followed by Grifola frondosa, Pleurotus eryngii and Lyophyllum shimeji. Other mushroom strains such as Morchella conica, Marasmius oreades, Lentinula edodes, Amanita ponderosa and Boletus edulis also showed a certain inhibitory activity. However, when the PL inhibitory activity was evaluated using an in vitro digestion model mimicking gut conditions, none of the selected mushroom extracts were able to inhibit PL activity. On the contrary, stimulation of the lipase activity levels was observed and it was not due to endogenous mushroom lipases activitiesThe research was supported by the European Union within the 7th framework programme (7FM-PEOPLE-2009-IIF project 251285), ALIBIRD-CM S2009 ⁄AGR-1469 regional program from the Community of Madrid (Spain) and AGL2010-21537 national R+D program from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovatio

Carbon-based biomass-derived catalysts for deoxygenation of fast pyrolysis bio-oil

Producing energy and chemicals from biomass is an interesting alternative for replacing conventional fossil sources with a renewable feedstock while enabling zero net greenhouse gases emissions. Particularly, fast pyrolysis of biomass waste enables the production of bio-oil, which can be upgraded to biofuels or value-added chemicals. The sustainability of this process can be enhanced by preparing carbon-based catalysts from the same biomass waste used as raw material for the biooil production, decreasing the inputs of the process and allowing recovery and recycle of the active phase by combustion of the carbon substrate. In this work, catalytic fast pyrolysis of olive stone residues was studied using mesoporous carbon-based acid catalysts prepared by activation with H3PO4 of olive stones.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech