Analyzing the negative effects of motivating e-learning tools in archeology teaching

[EN] In this article we study the negative effects of applying motivating e-Learning tools as a method to increase students’ engagement through their learning process. In particular, we demonstrate that increasing students’ motivation can have a negative effect on students’ efficiency if they engage with the applications in a wrong way. In our carried out experience, we have used a virtual reconstruction of the TT 209 archeological site in Luxor. This application allows students to move inside and outside the site and get some information on the different activities that were done along the field work. We have found that students tend to use the application just as a game. This fact decreases students’ efficiency since they do not pay enough attention to the learning activities inside the system. To avoid this effect, we propose to use gamification strategies such as rewards to redirect students’ attention to the learning process

Diet: Cause or consequence of the microbial profile of cholelithiasis disease?

Recent dietary habits and lifestyle could explain the shaping of the gut microbiota composition and, in consequence, the increasing prevalence of certain pathologies. However, little attention has been paid to the influence of diet on microbiotas, other than the gut microbiota. This is important in cholelithiasis, given that changes in the production of bile acids may affect gallbladder microbial communities. Our aim was to assess the association between regular dietary intake and gallbladder microbial composition. Fourteen adults with cholelithiasis and 14 controls, sex-age-matched and without gastrointestinal pathology, were included. Diet was assessed through a food frequency questionnaire and quantification of gallbladder microbiota sequences by Illumina 16S rRNA gene-based analysis. The cholelithiasic patients showed greater intake of potatoes and lower consumption of vegetables, non-alcoholic drinks, and sauces, which resulted in a lower intake of energy, lipids, digestible polysaccharides, folate, calcium, magnesium, vitamin C, and some phenolic compounds. Regarding the altered bile microorganisms in cholelithiasic patients, dairy product intake was negatively associated with the proportions of Bacteroidaceae and Bacteroides, and several types of fiber, phenolics, and fatty acids were linked to the abundance of Bacteroidaceae, Chitinophagaceae, Propionibacteraceae, Bacteroides, and Escherichia-Shigella. These results support a link between diet, biliary microbiota, and cholelithiasis.This research was funded by the Spanish “Plan Estatal de I+D+i” Grant number (AGL2013-44761-P) I. Gutiérrez-Díaz was supported by “Plan Regional de Investigación del Principado de Asturias” Grant number (GRUPIN14-043).Peer reviewe

La diabetes en España desde la perspectiva de la farmacia comunitaria: conocimiento, cumplimiento y satisfacción con el tratamiento

Objetivos: Conocer la situación actual, en cuanto a utilización de medicamentos, realización de controles, estado de salud y percepción que tienen sobre su enfermedad los diabéticos españoles que acuden a las farmacias comunitarias.Métodos: Estudio descriptivo transversal (enero-marzo 2014) en farmacias comunitarias españolas. Sujetos: personas diagnosticadas de diabetes, que acudían a la farmacia para retirar su tratamiento. La hoja de registro de datos incluía utilización de medicamentos, realización de controles periódicos, cuestionario de conocimiento sobre la enfermedad (Berbés), de conocimiento y cumplimiento del tratamiento y de satisfacción con la medicación (DTSQ). El tamaño muestral mínimo se estimó en 385 personas diabéticas.Resultados: 652 pacientes diabéticos, 49,5% hombres y 50,5% mujeres, 54,6% mayores de 65 años, 73,0% con dos o más factores de riesgo cardiovascular. El 84,1% utilizan ADO, el 38,0% insulina y el 22,9% ambos. 146 pacientes presentaron uno o más episodios de hipoglucemia en el último año. El 65,3% de los pacientes con insulina reutiliza las agujas. El 91,6% manifiesta no tener ningún problema en la realización del autoanálisis y el 72,8% reutiliza las lancetas. Conocían adecuadamente su tratamiento 196 (34,1%) y lo cumplían 432 (76,3%). La satisfacción con el tratamiento es buena (24,6±6,6 puntos sobre 36) (82,8% de pacientes satisfechos).Conclusiones: La utilización de medicamentos no se adecúa suficientemente a las guías clínicas. Las revisiones y los autocontroles que realizan son insuficientes. El conocimiento sobre la enfermedad y la medicación es bajo. El cumplimiento y la satisfacción con los tratamientos es alta, menor en los usuarios de insulina

Estudio de algunos elementos minerales presentes en diversos Cestodes

Se han estudiado en Dipylidium canium (hospedador Canis familiaris), Avitellina caninum centripunctata (hospedador Ovis aries), Moniezia expansa (hospedador Ovis aries), Moniezia benedeni (hospedador Bos taurus), Taenia saginata (hospedador Homo sapiens) y Neotaenotenia ctenoides (hospedador Oryctolagus cuniculus), los siguientes elementos minerales: Ca, Mg, Na y K.In this paper the authors hav·e studied in Dipylidium caninum (host Canís familiaris), Avitellina centripunctata (host Ovis aries), Moniezia expansa (host Ovies aries), Moniezia benedeni (host Bos taurus), Taenia saginata (host Hamo sapines) and Neotaenotenia ctenoides (host Oryctolagus cuniculus), the fOllowing elements minerals; Ca, M g, Na and K

Drug Repurposing for Cancers With Limited Survival: Protocol for a Retrospective Cohort Study

Only 5% of the molecules tested in oncology phase 1 trials reach the market after an average of 7.5 years of waiting and at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. To reduce the cost and shorten the time of discovery of new treatments, drug repurposing (research with molecules already approved for another indication) and the use of secondary data (not collected for the purpose of research) have been proposed. Due to advances in informatics in clinical care, secondary data can, in some cases, be of equal quality to primary data generated through prospective studies.Objective: The objective of this study is to identify drugs currently marketed for other indications that may have an effect on the prognosis of patients with cancer.Methods: We plan to monitor a cohort of patients with high-lethality cancers treated in the public health system of Catalonia between 2006 and 2012, retrospectively, for survival for 5 years after diagnosis or until death. A control cohort, comprising people without cancer, will also be retrospectively monitored for 5 years. The following study variables will be extracted from different population databases: type of cancer (patients with cancer cohort), date and cause of death, pharmacological treatment, sex, age, and place of residence. During the first stage of statistical analysis of the patients with cancer cohort, the drugs consumed by the long-term survivors (alive at 5 years) will be compared with those consumed by nonsurvivors. In the second stage, the survival associated with the consumption of each relevant drug will be analyzed. For the analyses, groups will be matched for potentially confounding variables, and multivariate analyses will be performed to adjust for residual confounding variables if necessary. The control cohort will be used to verify whether the associations found are exclusive to patients with cancer or whether they also occur in patients without cancer.Results: We anticipate discovering multiple significant associations between commonly used drugs and the survival outcomes of patients with cancer. We expect to publish the initial results in the first half of 2024.Conclusions: This retrospective study may identify several commonly used drugs as candidates for repurposing in the treatment of various cancers. All analyses are considered exploratory; therefore, the results will have to be confirmed in subsequent clinical trials. However, the results of this study may accelerate drug discovery in oncology

A Kinematic Sensor and Algorithm to Detect Motor Fluctuations in Parkinson Disease : Validation Study Under Real Conditions of Use

A new algorithm has been developed, which combines information on gait bradykinesia and dyskinesia provided by a single kinematic sensor located on the waist of Parkinson disease (PD) patients to detect motor fluctuations (On- and Off-periods). The goal of this study was to analyze the accuracy of this algorithm under real conditions of use. This validation study of a motor-fluctuation detection algorithm was conducted on a sample of 23 patients with advanced PD. Patients were asked to wear the kinematic sensor for 1 to 3 days at home, while simultaneously keeping a diary of their On- and Off-periods. During this testing, researchers were not present, and patients continued to carry on their usual daily activities in their natural environment. The algorithm's outputs were compared with the patients' records, which were used as the gold standard. The algorithm produced 37% more results than the patients' records (671 vs 489). The positive predictive value of the algorithm to detect Off-periods, as compared with the patients' records, was 92% (95% CI 87.33%-97.3%) and the negative predictive value was 94% (95% CI 90.71%-97.1%); the overall classification accuracy was 92.20%. The kinematic sensor and the algorithm for detection of motor-fluctuations validated in this study are an accurate and useful tool for monitoring PD patients with difficult-to-control motor fluctuations in the outpatient setting

Multicentre, randomised, single-blind, parallel group trial to compare the effectiveness of a Holter for Parkinson's symptoms against other clinical monitoring methods: Study protocol

Introduction In recent years, multiple studies have aimed to develop and validate portable technological devices capable of monitoring the motor complications of Parkinson's disease patients (Parkinson's Holter). The effectiveness of these monitoring devices for improving clinical control is not known. Methods and analysis This is a single-blind, clusterrandomised controlled clinical trial. Neurologists from Spanish health centres will be randomly assigned to one of three study arms (1:1:1): (a) therapeutic adjustment using information from a Parkinson's Holter that will be worn by their patients for 7 days, (b) therapeutic adjustment using information from a diary of motor fluctuations that will be completed by their patients for 7 days and (c) therapeutic adjustment using clinical information collected during consultation. It is expected that 162 consecutive patients will be included over a period of 6 months. The primary outcome is the efficiency of the Parkinson's Holter compared with traditional clinical practice in terms of Off time reduction with respect to the baseline (recorded through a diary of motor fluctuations, which will be completed by all patients). As secondary outcomes, changes in variables related to other motor complications (dyskinesia and freezing of gait), quality of life, autonomy in activities of daily living, adherence to the monitoring system and number of doctor-patient contacts will be analysed. The noninferiority of the Parkinson's Holter against the diary of motor fluctuations in terms of Off time reduction will be studied as the exploratory objective. Ethics and dissemination approval for this study has been obtained from the Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge Ethics Committee. The results of this study will inform the practical utility of the objective information provided by a Parkinson's Holter and, therefore, the convenience of adopting this technology in clinical practice and in future clinical trials. We expect public dissemination of the results in 202

Computer Vision and Metrics Learning for Hypothesis Testing: An Application of Q-Q Plot for Normality Test

This paper proposes a new procedure to construct test statistics for hypothesis testing by computer vision and metrics learning. The application highlighted in this paper is applying computer vision on Q-Q plot to construct a new test statistic for normality test. Traditionally, there are two families of approaches for verifying the probability distribution of a random variable. Researchers either subjectively assess the Q-Q plot or objectively use a mathematical formula, such as Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, to formally conduct a normality test. Graphical assessment by human beings is not rigorous whereas normality test statistics may not be accurate enough when the uniformly most powerful test does not exist. It may take tens of years for statistician to develop a new and more powerful test statistic. The first step of the proposed method is to apply computer vision techniques, such as pre-trained ResNet, to convert a Q-Q plot into a numerical vector. Next step is to apply metric learning to find an appropriate distance function between a Q-Q plot and the centroid of all Q-Q plots under the null hypothesis, which assumes the target variable is normally distributed. This distance metric is the new test statistic for normality test. Our experimentation results show that the machine-learning-based test statistics can outperform traditional normality tests in all cases, particularly when the sample size is small. This study provides convincing evidence that the proposed method could objectively create a powerful test statistic based on Q-Q plots and this method could be modified to construct many more powerful test statistics for other applications in the future

Informe: Derecho del trabajo y de la seguridad social en España en 2013. Algunos puntos críticos

Este documento intenta reflejar algunos de los principales cambios y novedades del ordenamiento laboral español en 2013, levantando acta de cómo la mutabilidad de nuestro Derecho del Trabajo es imparable. Este informe, consciente de ello, ofrece una selección de elementos esenciales, a juicio de sus autores, especialistas en cada una de las materias, encuadrados en la Sección Juvenil de la Asociación Española de Derecho del Trabajo y de la Seguridad Social. En él, conforme a la organización de dicha Sección en grupos de trabajo, se abordan las novedades más relevantes en materia de derechos fundamentales inespecíficos, contratación laboral, vicisitudes del contrato de trabajo, Derecho colectivo, conciliación y corresponsabilidad, protección social y prevención de riesgos laborales. This paper tries to show some of the many changes and novelties in Spanish Labour Law during 2013, drawing up a record of the unstoppable character of our Labour legal system. This report offers a selection of essential elements, according to its authors, all of them specialists in each one of the subjects, being part of the Young Scholars’ Section of the Spanish Association for Labour and Social Security Law. According to the organization of the said Section in working groups, we can find novelties concerning unspecific fundamental rights, work contracts, the life of the work contract and collective Labour Law, reconciliation and co responsibility, social protection and occupational risk prevention