A comprehensive model of adjustment to pain in the co-occurrence of PTSD and chronic musculoskeletal pain: vulnerability and protective pathways

There are a significant comorbidity between PTSD and chronic pain. Thus, studies clarifying the vulnerability and protective variables and mechanisms associated with PTSD and chronic pain are needed. The aim of this study was to examine the association between trauma, resilience, PTSD symptoms, and the variables included in the fear-avoidance models (anxiety sensitivity, catastrophizing, fear-avoidance beliefs, fear of pain, pain hypervigilance) as well as pain acceptance and experiential avoidance in explaining adjustment to chronic pain (pain intensity, pain-related disability and emotional distress). Method: the sample consisted of 229 patients with chronic musculoskeletal back pain. Results: Structural Equation Modelling was used. Statistical tests indicated that the hypothesized model adequately fitted the data (RMSEA = .07; CFI = .99; NNFI = .98; TLI = .96). The χ2 test was significant (χ2 (8) = 19.25, χ2 /dl = 2.40, p = .014). The results provided support for the hypothesized model. All the standardized path coefficients were significant (p < .05). Conclusions: This study provides empirical support for the potential role of PTSD symptoms in fear-avoidance models of chronic pain, and may provide support for the diathesis-stress model of pain. It is the first comprehensive model of adjustment to pain to consider vulnerability and protective adaptation mechanisms in patients who have undergone a traumatic event. The study highlights the importance of a comprehensive framework of reference to understand the comorbidity of PTSD and chronic musculoskeletal pain, and the need to provide well-designed treatment programs for the simultaneous treatment of these conditions.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

A Q model investment system in material and immaterial assets

The aim of this paper is to study the determinants of investment on material and immaterial assets of Spanish firms considering they are heterogeneous assets. With this objective, we propose an investment model based on both prospective models and Tobin’s q. The developed model is then applied to analyse the investment determinants of material and immaterial assets over a panel of 87 non-financial Spanish firms that have been quoting on the Stock Market during 12 years. Results show that material investment decisions are isolated from immaterial assets, whereas immaterial investment is affected by tangible investment and stock.This paper was developed under the objectives of the CREVALOR Research Group (DGASpain). It was financed by MEC-FEDER Research Project SEJ2005-07341.peer-reviewe

Análisis de la planificación didáctica para el desarrollo de la educación física de los niños y las niñas de III nivel de preescolar de la Escuela Bautista Nueva Jerusalén, del Municipio de San Rafael del Sur, en el departamento de Managua, II Semestre 2016

La educación física es la disciplina pedagógica que pretende todo, el aspecto corporal del ser humano, así como el desarrollo y perfeccionamiento de sus cualidades naturales, influyendo con ello de forma activa en el medio ambiente teniendo como resultado el desarrollo integral, así como su formación general como individuo. Las actividades físicas ayudan a la eficiencia del movimiento desde las habilidades motrices más simples hasta las más complejas, con la finalidad de propiciar y conservar el equilibrio de la capacidad funcional del niño o la niña. La presente investigación se realizó con la finalidad de analizar la planificación didáctica para el desarrollo de la educación física de los niños y niñas de III nivel de preescolar de la Escuela Bautista Nueva Jerusalén, del Municipio de San Rafael del Sur en el departamento de Managua, II Semestre 2016. Es una investigación cualitativa, cuyas características permiten acercarnos al campo de estudio, a través de las técnicas e instrumentos que utilizamos para recoger y seleccionar la información como lo fueron las observaciones que se llevaron a cabo en el III nivel de preescolar de la Escuela Bautista Nueva Jerusalén en el Municipio de San Rafael del sur, Departamento de Managua. La aplicación de los instrumentos y el análisis documental le dio a nuestra investigación un carácter científico. Uno de los principales hallazgos es que los niños del III nivel en esta escuela no realizan Educación Física, pues la docente se enfoca en realizar un breve periodo de gimnasia matutina que son ejercicio repetitivo o entona un canto que implica movimiento del cuerpo como lo es (cabeza, mano, rodilla y pie). Aunque ella conoce la importancia de la Educación Física no la realiza por qué no se lo exige la programación, ni la escuela y tampoco existe un programa de Educación Física para Educación Inicial. Al finalizar, esta investigación nos dimos cuenta de la necesidad de contar con un programa de Educación Física para Educación Inicial que nos ayude a nuestro actuar como docentes, dándole así la importancia a esta clase como tal, para el desarrollo integral del niño en crecimient

"In vitro" activity of pentamidine alone and in combination against clinical isolates of carbapenemase-producing and colistin-resistant Enterobacteriaceae

Motivation: The increase in antimicrobial resistance rates and the difficulty to treat patients with infections caused by these kind of pathogens may urgent the search of alternative treatments. The objective of this project was to study the in vitro activity of pentamidine (PEN) alone and in combination against these kinds of pathogens. Methods: Fifteen different clinical isolates: 9 Enterobacter spp., 5 Klebsiella pneumoniae and 1 Escherichia coli. MICs were determined by microdilution in Mueller-Hinton broth at 24 and 48 hours. The assignment of clinical categories was made by the EUCAST criteria. MBCs were measured following the standard protocols. Bactericidal and synergistic activity of PEN alone and in combination was measured by time-kill curves at concentrations of 1xMIC in different time point. The in vitro prevention of the development of resistance was analyzed in time–kill studies.Results: PEN MIC range was from 200-800 mg/L. All Enterobacter strains were susceptible to doripenem (DOR), meropenem, amikacin (AMK) and rifampicin (RIF); also were susceptible to gentamicin (GEN) and tobramycin (TOB), except E. cloacae 32 and 297. All Enterobacter spp. were resistant to colistin (COL). Fifty percent of the strains were resistant to tigecycline (TIG). K. pneumoniae OXA-48/CTX-M-15 was resistant only to fosfomycin (FOS). K. pneumoniae KPC-3 was susceptible only to GEN. E. coli NDM-1 and K. pneumoniae NDM-1 were susceptible to COL and TIG. K. pneumoniae VIM-1 was resistant to GEN and TOB and K. pneumoniae VIM-1/DHA-1 was resistant to TOB, DOR and COL. All strains were resistant to FOS except E. cloacae 190. PEN alone and in combination with GEN, AMK, TIG, TOB, RIF and DOR showed bactericidal activity after four hours against K. pneumoniae NDM-1, K. pneumoniae NDM-1/DHA-1 and K. pneumoniae OXA-48/CTX-M-15. PEN together with the tested antimicrobials but TIG showed bactericidal and synergistic activity at 24 hours against E. cloacae 32. In addition, PEN prevented the appearance of mutants resistant to aminoglycosides and TIG in the carbapenemase-producing strains, and TOB-resistant mutants in the E. cloacae 32 strain.Conclusions: The association of pentamidine with the antimicrobials studied confirms a good in vitro activity of these combinations against carbapenemase-producing and colistin-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, suggesting that they could be a new alternative for the treatment of infections caused by these kinds of pathogens

GAMPP: Genetic algorithm for UAV mission planning problems

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25017-5_16Due to the rapid development of the UAVs capabilities, these are being incorporated into many fields to perform increasingly complex tasks. Some of these tasks are becoming very important because they involve a high risk to the vehicle driver, such as detecting forest fires or rescue tasks, while using UAVs avoids risking human lives. Recent researches on artificial intelligence techniques applied to these systems provide a new degree of high-level autonomy of them. Mission planning for teams of UAVs can be defined as the planning process of locations to visit (way-points) and the vehicle actions to do (loading/dropping a load, taking videos/pictures, acquiring information), typically over a time period. Currently, UAVs are controlled remotely by human operators from ground control stations, or use rudimentary systems. This paper presents a new Genetic Algorithm for solving Mission Planning Problems (GAMPP) using a cooperative team of UAVs. The fitness function has been designed combining several measures to look for optimal solutions minimizing the fuel consumption and the mission time (or makespan). The algorithm has been experimentally tested through several missions where its complexity is incrementally modified to measure the scalability of the problem. Experimental results show that the new algorithm is able to obtain good solutions improving the runtime of a previous approach based on CSPs.This work is supported by Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid under project CIBERDINE S2013/ICE-3095, Spanish Ministry of Science and Education under Project Code TIN2014-56494-C4-4-P and Savier Project (Airbus Defence & Space, FUAM-076915). The authors would like to acknowledge the support obtained from Airbus Defence & Space, specially from Savier Open Innovation project members: José Insenser, César Castro and Gemma Blasco

A structural model of the relationships between optimism and perceived emotional intelligence on bullying victimization and health.

Bullying is a relationship in which an individual, or a group of individuals, intentionally and repeatedly perpetrates aggressive behaviors towards someone unable to defend himself/herself. Traditional forms of bullying consist of physical, verbal and covert forms of aggressive behaviors. Recently, the new phenomenon of cyberbullying has emerged. This relatively new form of bullying is defined as a behavior displayed through electronic or digital media. Multiple variables have been related to bullying victimization including perceived emotional intelligence (PEI) and optimism. Both variables have implications on the manner in which people cope with stressful experiences as could be bullying, which in turn could affect the level of perceived health. However, there are no studies that have considered all these variables simultaneously. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to examine, via structural equation modelling, the independent contribution of EI and optimism on bullying victimization and perceived physical health in adolescents. A total of 650 secondary school students (317 boys and 333 girls, with ages ranged from 11 to 18) participated in the study. The participants completed measures of PIE (TMMS-24; Fernández-Berrocal et al., 2004), optimism (General Mood Subscale of the Emotional Quotient Inventory-Youth Version; Bar-On and Parker, 2000), bullying (School Victimization Scale; Cava et al., 2010), cyberbullying (Cyber-Victimization Scale; Buelga et al., 2012), and physical health (KIDSCREEN-10 Index; Raven-Sieberer et al., 2004). Results gave partial empirical support to the hypothesized model, and shows significant relationships between the variables: optimism on clarity and repair dimensions of IE (but not on the attention subscale), optimism and attention (but not clarity and repair dimensions) on bullying, and bullying on health. Together these findings shed light on those factors that should be considered when developing prophylactic strategies within adolescents to become more resilient to the adverse effects of bullying behavior.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Development of an Activity Patterns Scale (APS)

Six activity patterns were identified across various self-report measures in participants with chronic pain: Pain Avoidance, Activity Avoidance; Task Contingent Persistence; Excessive Persistence, Pain Contingent Persistence and Pacing (Kindermans et al., 2011). It was proposed that instruments assessing “pacing” should include items addressing one specific pacing behavior (breaking tasks into smaller pieces; taking frequent short rests and speeding up or slowing down) with a single goal (increasing activity level, conserve energy for valued activities and pain reduction) (Nielson et al., 2013). The aim of the present study was to develop an instrument to assess the activity patterns identified by Kindermans et al. (2011). The instrument also included three pacing scales one for each of the aforementioned goals. Methods A sample of 229 patients with fibromyalgia and 62 suffering other rheumatic diseases answered online the APS and the “Patterns of Activity Measure-Pain” (POAM-P) (Cane et al., 2007). Three alternative factor structures were tested by confirmatory factor analyses performed via structural equation modelling. . Results The structure with the best fit had 8 factors corresponding to the hypothesized scales: Pain Avoidance (α=.60), Activity Avoidance (α=.60); Task Contingent Persistence (α=.81); Excessive Persistence (α=.84), Pain Contingent Persistence (α=.70), Pacing for increasing activity (α=.76), Pacing for energy conservation (α=.72) and Pacing for pain reduction (α=.65). The correlations with the POAM-P scales were high and in the postulated direction. Conclusions The APS showed adequate reliability and structural validity. According to these results, Avoidance, Persistence and Pacing seem to be multidimensional constructs.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Solving Complex Multi-UAV Mission Planning Problems using Multi-objective Genetic Algorithms

Due to recent booming of UAVs technologies, these are being used in many fields involving complex tasks. Some of them involve a high risk to the vehicle driver, such as fire monitoring and rescue tasks, which make UAVs excellent for avoiding human risks. Mission Planning for UAVs is the process of planning the locations and actions (loading/dropping a load, taking videos/pictures, acquiring information) for the vehicles, typically over a time period. These vehicles are controlled from Ground Control Stations (GCSs) where human operators use rudimentary systems. This paper presents a new Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm for solving complex Mission Planning Problems (MPP) involving a team of UAVs and a set of GCSs. A hybrid fitness function has been designed using a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) to check if solutions are valid and Pareto-based measures to look for optimal solutions. The algorithm has been tested on several datasets optimizing different variables of the mission, such as the makespan, the fuel consumption, distance, etc. Experimental results show that the new algorithm is able to obtain good solutions, however as the problem becomes more complex, the optimal solutions also become harder to find.Comment: This is a preprint version of the article submitted and published in Soft Computin

In-situ hydration study of sulfobelite eco-cements

ALBA User Meeting and VI AUSE Conferenc

Relación entre las variables asociadas al trauma (disociación, culpa, evitación experiencial y síntomas de estrés postraumático) y su influencia en la salud percibida.

Introducción: Una experiencia traumática se define como un evento que supera la capacidad de una persona para responder a él. El trauma se ha asociado con una variedad de problemas psicológicos, entre los que destacan los síntomas de estrés postraumático, problemas de salud y una falta de bienestar percibido. Además, varios estudios han demostrado que otras variables están asociadas con la exposición al trauma y pueden tener un papel importante para explicar el desarrollo y el mantenimiento de los síntomas postraumáticos. Estas son: disociación, culpa y evitación experiencial. Conjuntamente, se han establecido diferencias de género en cada una de ellas. Sin embargo, no existen estudios que hayan considerado todas estas variables simultáneamente. Objetivos: Examinar la relación entre disociación, culpa, evitación experiencial y síntomas de estrés postraumático en un grupo de personas con historia de trauma y su influencia sobre su salud percibida. Además, comprobar si tales relaciones se modifican a través del género. Método: Se incluyó a un total de 903 participantes. La edad media fue de 22.25 (DT= 5.17) para la muestra total, 21.9 (DT= 4.5) para la muestra de la mujer y de 23.50 (DT= 6.92) para la muestra de los hombres. Se empleó un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales para poner a prueba las relaciones postuladas en el modelo hipotético, y se analizó este a través de un análisis multi-grupo (hombres y mujeres). Resultados: Los resultados dieron apoyo empírico al modelo hipotético, mostrando relaciones significativas entre las variables en ambos sexos. Sólo en los hombres, la asociación entre evitación experiencial y los síntomas postraumáticos no es significativa, pero el modelo final es significativamente equivalente entre género. Conclusiones: En conjunto, estos hallazgos arrojan luz sobre los factores que deben ser considerados cuando se desarrollan estrategias tanto preventivas como de tratamiento de personas que han vivido algún tipo de trauma.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech