International Workshop of Syntactic Variation of Catalan and Spanish Dialects, 26-28 June 2013, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

This is a review of the papers presented at the "International Workshop of Syntactic Variation of Catalan and Spanish Dialects" (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, June 26-28, 2013)

Estrategias de focalización de la gramática del español

En este trabajo se tratan dos cuestiones relacionadas con el foco: si existe un listado de subtipos de foco que se encuentre extendido en la bibliografía y si es posible establecer desde qué componente gramatical se legitima el foco. Siguiendo estos objetivos iniciales, en la primera parte del estudio se presentan los mecanismos que están disponibles en la gramàtica del español para marcar un constituyente como foco según el nivel gramatical que se explota: fonología, morfología o sintaxis (Gussenhoven, 2008). En la segunda parte, se comentan tres aproximaciones teóricas al foco. En función de la posición teórica que se adopte, se encuentran explicaciones de distinta naturaleza: fonológica (Cinque 1993), sintáctica (Rizzi 1997) y semántica (Herburger 2000).En aquest treball es tracten dues qüestions; per una banda, l'existència o no en la bibliografia d'un llistat de subtipus de focus i, per una altra banda, quin component gramatical legitima el focus. Seguint aquests objectius inicials, en la primera part de l'estudi es presenten els mecanismes que es troben disponibles en la gramàtica del espanyol per a marcar un constituent com a focus segons el nivell gramatical explotat: fonologia, morfologia o sintaxi (Gussenhoven, 2008). En la segona part, es comenten tres aproximacions teòriques al focus. En funció de la posició teòrica que s'adopti, es troben explicacions de diferent naturalesa: fonològica (Cinque 1993), sintàctica (Rizzi 1997) i semàntica (Herburger 2000)

Endocrine and Metabolic impact of oral ingestion of a carob-pod derived natural syrup containing D-Pinitol: potential use as a novel sweetener in diabetes

The use of added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners in processed foods and soft drinks are being blamed for multiple complications associated with obesity and diabetes. High fructose content contributes to obesity and liver steatosis, and excessive consumption of non-nutritive sweeteners can generate gut dysbiosis complicating the metabolic control exerted by the liver. Beyond its evolutionary significance in the selection of foods with a high glucose content as an energy source, the fact is that the consumption of sweets produces a hedonic pleasure in our brain. Then, the challenge stands at: how do we control the use of added sugars while providing a safe, palatable, sweet flavour to foods?. The present work explores an alternative approach, in humans and rodents, for sweetening through the use of a simple carob-pod-derived syrup which contains the inositol D-Pinitol. This inositol is known as an insulin sensitizer in muscle capable of keeping glycaemia while avoiding both unnecessary insulin secretion and the conversion of carbohydrates into fat depots .Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Aquacultural Homoeopathy: A Focus on Marine Species

Homoeopathy is an alternative medical system proposed by Samuel Hahnemann in the eighteenth century. It uses highly diluted and agitated substances that derived from plants, minerals or animals, which have shown to be effective in human medicine, agronomy, veterinary, and as a novelty, in marine aquaculture. Aquacultural homoeopathy has developed rapidly in recent years, partially motivated by the misuse of powerful drugs (hormones, antibiotics, disinfectants) that when solving a problem generate undesirable side effects. In the last 10 years, scientific articles have been published on its application in freshwater fish native to Brazil, obtaining beneficial effects on growth, survival, hepatosomatic index, development of muscle fibres and lipid content in muscle. At Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste (CIBNOR, Mexico: www.cibnor.mx), we have studied the effects of homoeopathy to improve the culture of economically important marine species of molluscs, fish and shrimp. In this chapter, we show a selection of different research with preliminary or advanced results, related to the use of homoeopathy and its impact on zootechnic, biochemical, genomic and transcriptomic parameters in marine molluscs, fish and crustaceans. The results obtained suggest that homoeopathy is an eco-friendly alternative applicable in aquaculture industry to improve various productive and health aspects

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Spatiotemporal Characteristics of the Largest HIV-1 CRF02_AG Outbreak in Spain: Evidence for Onward Transmissions

Background and Aim: The circulating recombinant form 02_AG (CRF02_AG) is the predominant clade among the human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1) non-Bs with a prevalence of 5.97% (95% Confidence Interval-CI: 5.41–6.57%) across Spain. Our aim was to estimate the levels of regional clustering for CRF02_AG and the spatiotemporal characteristics of the largest CRF02_AG subepidemic in Spain.Methods: We studied 396 CRF02_AG sequences obtained from HIV-1 diagnosed patients during 2000–2014 from 10 autonomous communities of Spain. Phylogenetic analysis was performed on the 391 CRF02_AG sequences along with all globally sampled CRF02_AG sequences (N = 3,302) as references. Phylodynamic and phylogeographic analysis was performed to the largest CRF02_AG monophyletic cluster by a Bayesian method in BEAST v1.8.0 and by reconstructing ancestral states using the criterion of parsimony in Mesquite v3.4, respectively.Results: The HIV-1 CRF02_AG prevalence differed across Spanish autonomous communities we sampled from (p < 0.001). Phylogenetic analysis revealed that 52.7% of the CRF02_AG sequences formed 56 monophyletic clusters, with a range of 2–79 sequences. The CRF02_AG regional dispersal differed across Spain (p = 0.003), as suggested by monophyletic clustering. For the largest monophyletic cluster (subepidemic) (N = 79), 49.4% of the clustered sequences originated from Madrid, while most sequences (51.9%) had been obtained from men having sex with men (MSM). Molecular clock analysis suggested that the origin (tMRCA) of the CRF02_AG subepidemic was in 2002 (median estimate; 95% Highest Posterior Density-HPD interval: 1999–2004). Additionally, we found significant clustering within the CRF02_AG subepidemic according to the ethnic origin.Conclusion: CRF02_AG has been introduced as a result of multiple introductions in Spain, following regional dispersal in several cases. We showed that CRF02_AG transmissions were mostly due to regional dispersal in Spain. The hot-spot for the largest CRF02_AG regional subepidemic in Spain was in Madrid associated with MSM transmission risk group. The existence of subepidemics suggest that several spillovers occurred from Madrid to other areas. CRF02_AG sequences from Hispanics were clustered in a separate subclade suggesting no linkage between the local and Hispanic subepidemics

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Two mental disorders as disease models of language: linguistic (dis)organisation in schizophrenia and Huntington's disease

Language is a core aspect of human cognition and richly interacts with aspects of nonverbal cognition, as evidence from normal development (Perszyk & Waxman, 2018), abnormal development (Schroeder et al., 2020), and aphasia following brain damage (Fonseca et al., 2019; González et al., 2020) has come to suggest. Yet, how cognitive dysfunction relates to language dysfunction in adult-onset mental disorders still remains an open area of research. Profiling language disturbances in this clinical context could be practically significant in helping to discover representative biomarkers of disease progression and early detection, apart from contributing theoretical insights into the relation between language and cognition. In line with this, the main objective of this thesis is to profile deviant linguistic patterns in people with Huntington’s disease (HD) and Schizophrenia (SZ), both of which have only rarely been analysed from a linguistic point of view. Five linguistic studies were conducted. Study 1 (chapter 3) develops the linguistic profile of HD through the analysis of spontaneous speech samples from 20 individuals compared to 20 neurotypical subjects (NTs). Its aims were to replicate and expand a previous study in a different sample (Hinzen et al., 2018), using a total of 56 variables related to grammatical organisation. The second and third studies are two experimental neuropsychological studies, one using a grammaticality judgment task (Study 2, chapter 4), the other a sentence-picture matching task (Study 3, chapter 5). For these two studies, a new sample of 31 NTs and 31 patients with HD classified into pre-symptomatic, early and advanced stages was collected. Motivated by results from the general linguistic profiling of the HD population in the previous study, the focus here was experimental and the purpose was to specifically target the processing of illicit syntactic movement and the processing of Binding Theory principles respectively (Chomsky, 1984). Studies 4 and 5 focus on two unique corpora of speech in SZ. Study 4 (chapter 6) focuses on a rare corpus of spontaneous speech from 38 patients with an unusually high severe form of formal thought disorder (FDT), a core symptom of SZ according to the DSM-5. This corpus was collected and first analysed in Moya (1989). Our study captured patterns of linguistic disintegration across different linguistic strata (referential anomalies, argument structure, lexicon and morphosyntax). Study 5 (chapter 7) is based on a corpus of hallucinated voice talk in patients with a high symptom load of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). A linguistic profile of hallucinated voice talk based on literal transcriptions was built, through the analysis of transcripts from 19 patients with highly frequent voice talk. Overall, results from both HD and SZ populations provided evidence for distinctive and specific linguistic effects, which are not easily interpreted as secondary to primary motor dysfunction (in the case of HD) or to intellectual disability or nonverbal neurocognitive impairments (in the case of SZ). Specifically, pre-symptomatic and symptomatic HD patients exhibited distinct but complementary language patterns in certain grammatical domains: in the fluency domain, pre-symptomatic patients manifested patterns marked by prolongations, fill pauses, and repetitions, while symptomatic patients were prone to use more empty pauses, truncations and reformulations. In the domain of sentence connectivity, their speech was generally characterised by poor grammatical connections, since the use of parataxis and coordination was very common. The reduction of subordination could be interpreted as a weakness in building syntactic hierarchy. Following this line of thought, the evidence collected in Study 2 further experimentally confirmed a loss of cognitive control over the structural hierarchy as built through linguistic movement of syntactic constituents. Study 3 expanded this result to for syntactic principles involved in licensing (co-) reference. The latter study specifically demonstrates difficulties in processing syntactic locality constraints in the HD group, as captured by traditional principles of the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1984). In the case of SZ, Study 4 captured patterns of linguistic disintegration comparatively across hierarchical layers of linguistic organization in patients with FTD. In terms of broad linguistic domains, it turned out that even in FTD at this severe end, the morphosyntax and the lexicon were relatively little affected, and much less so proportionally when comparing it with the total number of referential errors, while argument structure was placed in the middle. In turn, the linguistic analysis of hallucinated voice talk (Study 5) revealed a strong dominance of parataxis (isolated clauses without grammatical connection), use of non-anaphoric noun phrases (without connection with previous units), and the relative absence of the first person, grammatical errors and semantic errors. Overall, these results show the feasibility and richness of linguistic profiling outside of neurological disorders said to be language-specific (i.e. aphasia). We regard such profiles as necessary new baselines for integration into neurocognitive models of these diseases; and possibly as informing the development of clinical tools for assessing, monitoring, and detecting cognitive changes and related symptoms. They provide a new dimension for neuropsychological profiling as well, where current test batteries may not capture the relevant linguistic phenomena, thereby adding an extra layer of relevant data. In addition, the richer linguistic disorders turn out to be in mental disorders, the more they motivate new theoretical models that rethink the relationship between cognition and language and link them in systematic ways.El lenguaje es un aspecto central de la cognición humana e interactúa con aspectos de la cognición no verbal, como evidencian el desarrollo normal (Perszyk &Waxman, 2018), el desarrollo anormal (Schroeder et al., 2020), y la afasia causada por daños cerebrales (Fonseca et al., 2019; González et al., 2020). Sin embargo, la relación entre la disfunción cognitiva y la disfunción lingüística en los trastornos mentales todavía está para descubrir. La identificación y la investigación de las perturbaciones lingüísticas en un contexto clínico puede ayudar a descubrir biomarcadores representativos de la progresión de ciertas enfermedades, desarrollar perfiles lingüísticos específicos para la detección temprana y contribuir a la investigación de la relación entre cognición y lenguaje. Siguiendo esta línea de pensamiento, el objetivo principal de esta tesis es detectar patrones lingüísticos anormales en pacientes con la enfermedad de Huntington (HD) y la esquizofrenia (SZ). Desde un punto de vista lingüístico, las anomalías del lenguaje en ambas enfermedades han sido analizadas de forma superficial. Siguiendo este objetivo, se llevaron a cabo cinco experimentos lingüísticos. El Estudio 1 (capítulo 3) desarrolló el perfil lingüístico de la HD a través del análisis de muestras de conversación espontánea de 20 individuos. En esta investigación replicamos y expandimos un estudio anterior en una muestra poblacional distinta (Hinzen et al., 2018), utilizando un total de 56 variables relacionadas con la organización gramatical. La segunda y la tercera investigación son dos estudios neuropsicológicos experimentales donde se llevaron a cabo una tarea de juicio gramatical (Estudio 2, capítulo 4) y una tarea de concordancia de imágenes y oraciones (Estudio 3, capítulo 5). En estas investigaciones se recopilaron los datos de 31 sujetos neurotípicos (NTs) y 31 pacientes clasificados en etapas presintomáticas, iniciales y avances. Dado que el perfil lingüístico general de la población HD se extrajo en el estudio anterior, el objetivo aquí era diseccionar el procesamiento del movimiento sintáctico ilícito y el procesamiento de las restricciones sintácticas de (co-) referencia, capturadas por los principios tradicionales de la Binding Theory (Chomski, 1984). En cuanto al perfil lingüístico de la población con la SZ, los estudios 4 y 5 se centraron en dos corpus únicos de datos. El Estudio 4 (capítulo 6) se centró en un corpus de discurso espontáneo de 38 pacientes con una forma inusualmente alta de trastorno del pensamiento formal (FDT), un síntoma central en la SZ según el DSM-5. Este corpus fue recogido y analizado por primera vez en Moya (1989). Este estudio buscaba capturar patrones de desintegración lingüística empleando un conjunto de variables relacionadas con la organización lingüística (anomalías referenciales, estructura de argumentos, léxico y morfosintaxis). En el Estudio 5 (capítulo 7), por otro lado, se confeccionó un corpus de habla de voz alucinada en pacientes con alucinaciones verbales auditivas (AVHs). Se construyó un perfil lingüístico para el AVHs tras el análisis de las transcripciones de 19 pacientes. Los resultados muestran de forma inequívoca la existencia de efectos lingüísticos distintivos y específicos en las dos enfermedades, que no se pueden explicar por una disfunción motora primaria (en el caso de HD) o por una discapacidad intelectual previa o deficiencias neurocognitivas no verbales (en el caso de SZ). En la población con HD, los pacientes pre-sintomáticos y sintomáticos exhibían diferentes patrones lingüísticos, pero complementarios en ciertos dominios gramaticales: en el dominio de fluencia, los pacientes pre-sintomáticos manifestaban patrones marcados por las prolongaciones, pausas llenas y repeticiones, mientras que los pacientes sintomáticos eran propensos a utilizar más pausas vacías, truncaciones y reformulaciones. En el dominio de la conectividad oracional, su discurso se caracterizaba generalmente por conexiones gramaticales pobres, puesto que el uso de la parataxis y la coordinación era muy común. La reducción del uso de la subordinación se podría interpretar como una debilitación de la jerarquía sintáctica. Siguiendo esta línea de pensamiento, en el Estudio 2 se descubrió una pérdida de control cognitivo sobre la jerarquía estructural, construida a través del movimiento lingüístico de los constituyentes sintácticos. El Estudio 3 confirmó esta tendencia: se descubrió que los pacientes con HD presentaban una reducción de la sensibilidad a los principios sintácticos de construcción de estructuras. Los resultados mostraron dificultades en el procesamiento de las restricciones sintácticas de la localidad en el grupo de HD, siguiendo los principios establecidos en la Binding Theory (Chomski, 1984). En el caso de la SZ, el estudio 4 capturó patrones de desintegración lingüística a través de las capas jerárquicas de organización lingüística en pacientes con FTD. Los resultados mostraron que, incluso en el caso extremo del FTD severo, la morfosintaxis y el léxico se encontraban relativamente preservados en comparación al número total de errores referenciales. Por otro lado, el estudio 5 confeccionó el perfil lingüístico de las AVHs, caracterizado principalmente por el dominio de la parataxis (cláusulas aisladas sin conexión gramatical), el uso de frases nominales no anafóricas (sin conexión con unidades anteriores) y la ausencia relativa de la primera persona, de errores gramaticales y de errores semánticos. En general, estos resultados muestran la viabilidad y la riqueza de la elaboración de perfiles lingüísticos fuera de los trastornos neurológicos que tradicionalmente se han investigado desde un punto de vista lingüístico, como es el caso de la afasia. Consideramos que estos perfiles son relevantes para el análisis tanto de la SZ como de la HD y que se tendrían que integrar dentro de los modelos neurocognitivos de ambas enfermedades. Permitirían desarrollar, así, herramientas clínicas más precisas capaces de detectar, evaluar y rastrear cambios cognitivos y síntomas relacionados. También proporcionarían una nueva dimensión para la elaboración de perfiles neuropsicológicos más completos, puesto que las baterías clínicas actuales no permiten capturar fenómenos lingüísticos tan específicos. Además, la aparición constante de perturbaciones lingüísticas dentro de los trastornos mentales motiva de forma directa la creación de nuevos modelos teóricos que cuestionen la relación entre la cognición y el lenguaje y que los vinculen de manera sistemática