Coupling Human Mobility and Social Ties

Studies using massive, passively data collected from communication technologies have revealed many ubiquitous aspects of social networks, helping us understand and model social media, information diffusion, and organizational dynamics. More recently, these data have come tagged with geographic information, enabling studies of human mobility patterns and the science of cities. We combine these two pursuits and uncover reproducible mobility patterns amongst social contacts. First, we introduce measures of mobility similarity and predictability and measure them for populations of users in three large urban areas. We find individuals' visitations patterns are far more similar to and predictable by social contacts than strangers and that these measures are positively correlated with tie strength. Unsupervised clustering of hourly variations in mobility similarity identifies three categories of social ties and suggests geography is an important feature to contextualize social relationships. We find that the composition of a user's ego network in terms of the type of contacts they keep is correlated with mobility behavior. Finally, we extend a popular mobility model to include movement choices based on social contacts and compare it's ability to reproduce empirical measurements with two additional models of mobility

Herramientas culinarias en ERC. Cómo reducir el contenido de potasio y fósforo en los vegetales

Introducción: Los estudios epidemiológicos indican que entre el 30-50% de los pacientes con enfermedad renal crónica (ERC) presentan signos de malnutrición1, caracterizados por un desgaste proteico-energético (DPE). Entre sus muchas posibles causas se encuentran la alta prevalencia de anorexia de estos pacientes y la baja ingesta de nutrientes por restricciones dietéticas severas2, 3. Por otro lado, cada vez son más los profesionales sanitarios que manifiestan la importancia de integrar una intervención dietético-nutricional en el tratamiento de la enfermedad, con el objetivo de mejorar el pronóstico evolutivo y reducir los aspectos farmacológicos vinculados a ella4. La intervención dietético-nutricional propuesta apuesta por acercar las recomendaciones dietéticas a las de la población general, con dietas menos restrictivas que las tradicionales, asegurando la ingesta calórica adecuada, controlando la ingesta de potasio y fósforo, especialmente a través de alimentos de origen vegetal. Cabe remarcar que el éxito de esta intervención dietético-nutricional pasa por lograr una buena adherencia a la dieta por parte del paciente, a través del mantenimiento del placer de comer y evitando el aislamiento social, algo que las recomendaciones dietéticas tradicionales, en general muy restrictivas y laboriosas, no permiten..

Herramientas culinarias en ERC. Cómo reducir el contenido de potasio y fósforo en los vegetales

II Congreso de Alimentación, Nutrición y Dietética. Avances en Nutrición y Dietética Clínica: Prevención, Tratamiento y Gestión - Rol del Dietista-Nutricionist

Similarity theory and calculation of turbulent fluxes at the surface for the stably stratified atmospheric boundary layers

In this paper we revise the similarity theory for the stably stratified atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), formulate analytical approximations for the wind velocity and potential temperature profiles over the entire ABL, validate them against large-eddy simulation and observational data, and develop an improved surface flux calculation technique for use in operational models.Comment: The submission to a special issue of the Boundary-Layer Meteorology devoted to the NATO advanced research workshop Atmospheric Boundary Layers: Modelling and Applications for Environmental Securit

Metodología de autocalibración para un sistema de sensores láser 2D

Este trabajo define un método de autocalibración para un sistema de sensores láser 2D a lo largo de un rango de trabajo de 50 mm x 50 mm con incertidumbre submicrométrica. Un encoder de malla 2D es usado como artefacto no calibrado. El correcto funcionamiento del método es comprobado, primero usando datos virtuales y luego experimentalmente

Real-life management of patients with breakthrough cancer pain caused by bone metastases in Spain

Purpose: We aimed to explore the characteristics, and real-life therapeutic management of patients with breakthrough cancer pain (BTcP) caused by bone metastases in Spain, and to evaluate physicians' opinion of and satisfaction with prescribed BTcP therapy. Participants and methods: For the purposes of this study, an ad-hoc questionnaire was developed consisting of two domains: a) organizational aspects and care standards; b) clinical and treatment variables of bone metastatic BTcP patients. In addition, physicians' satisfaction with their prescribed BTcP therapy was assessed. Specialists collected data from up to five patients receiving treatment for BTcP caused by bone metastasis, all patients gave their consent to participate prior to inclusion. Results: A total of 103 cancer pain specialists (radiation oncologists [38.8%], pain specialists [33.0%], and palliative care (PC) specialists [21.4%]) were polled, and data on 386 BTcP patients with bone metastatic disease were collected. Only 33% of the specialists had implemented specific protocols for BTcP management, and 19.4% had established referral protocols for this group of patients. Half of all participants (50.5%) address quality of life and quality of care in their patients; however, only 27.0% did so from the patient's perspective, as they should do. Most patients had multiple metastases and were prescribed rapid-onset fentanyl preparations (71.2%), followed by immediate-release morphine (9.3%) for the treatment of BTcP. Rapid-onset fentanyl was prescribed more often in PC units (79.0%) than in pain units (75.9%) and radiation oncology units (61.1%) (p<0.01). Furthermore, most physicians (71.8%) were satisfied with the BTcP therapy prescribed. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate the need for routine assessment of quality of life in patients with bone BTcP. These findings also underscore the necessity for a multidisciplinary therapeutic strategy for breakthrough pain in clinical practice in Spain

CMV infection of liver transplant recipients: comparison of antigenemia and molecular biology assays

BACKGROUND: CMV is a major clinical problem in transplant recipients. Thus, it is important to use sensitive and specific diagnostic techniques to rapidly and accurately detect CMV infection and identify patients at risk of developing CMV disease. In the present study, CMV infection after liver transplantation was monitored retrospectively by two molecular biology assays - a quantitative PCR assay and a qualitative NASBA assay. The results were compared with those obtained by prospective pp65 antigenemia determinations. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 87 consecutive samples from 10 liver transplanted patients were tested for CMV by pp65 antigenemia, and CMV monitor and NASBA pp67 mRNA assay. RESULTS: CMV infection was detected in all patients by antigenemia and CMV monitor, whereas NASBA assay identified only 8/10 patients with viremia. Furthermore, CMV infection was never detected earlier by molecular biology assays than by antigenemia. Only 5/10 patients with CMV infection developed CMV disease. Using a cut off value of 8 cells/50,000, antigenemia was found to be the assay that better identified patients at risk of developing CMV disease. However, the kinetics of the onset of infection detected by NASBA and CMV monitor seemed to have better identified patients at risk of developing CMV disease. Furthermore, before onset of disease, CMV pp67 mRNA was found to have similar or better negative and positive predictive values for the development of CMV disease. CONCLUSIONS: The present data, suggests that the concomitant use of antigenemia and pp67 mRNA assay gives the best identification of patients at risk of developing CMV disease