Religion and Innovation in Europe: Implications for Product Life-Cycle Management

This paper analyzes the relationship between religion and innovation in Europe. To the best knowledge of the authors, no paper has been published about the association of religion with innovation and innovative products and services, at an individual level, for all the countries that belong to the European Union. This is the main goal of our paper. The results show that the orientation of innovativeness depends on religion. This study contains a segmentation of the main religions in Europe, taking into account their innovative profile. Connecting the characteristics of the religious segments found and the innovations life-cycle concept, companies have a tool to manage different innovations’ evolutive stages taking into consideration the religion of their customers. The European policy-makers, still dominated by a traditional innovation approach, gain a demand-side perspective to improve citizen’s innovativeness awareness and acceptance. Finally, religiosity does not seem to have a very strong relationship with attitudes towards innovation once we control for religious affiliation

El programa reduccionista en las Ciencias de la vida (1910-1944).

Sin resume

Estudio preliminar sobre la capacidad predictiva de estancia hospitalaria de las escalas SRIS, SOFA y qSOFA

Actualmente se enfatiza, como criterio de gravedad en el paciente con infección, tener 2 o más puntos de la escala SOFA (Sequential Organ Failure Assessment) o qSOFA (quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment), y retiran el tener 2 o más criterios de SRIS (síndrome de respuesta inflamatoria sistémica) de la definición de sepsis. En el entorno quirúrgico con/sin infección, la escala SRIS y SOFA son ampliamente utilizadas como indicadores del estado de gravedad, sin tener todavía ningún papel la escala qSOFA ni el criterio diferenciador de ≥ 2 puntos de la escala SOFA o qSOFA. Objetivo principal. Determinar la capacidad discriminatoria de mala evolución, definida por una estancia hospitalaria prolongada, de una puntuación ≥ 2 de las tres escalas de gravedad utilizadas en la sepsis (SOFA, qSOFA y SRIS) en pacientes sin infección después de una cirugía cardiaca con circulación extracorpórea (CEC). Material y métodos. Se ha realizado un estudio retrospectivo de una muestra consecutiva de 200 pacientes, que fueron programados para una cirugía de reparación valvular cardiaca con circulación extracorpórea a lo largo del año 2015. Se determinó la puntuación SOFA, qSOFA, y SRIS a las 24 horas del ingreso en la Unidad de Reanimación. Como variable principal se utilizó estancia hospitalaria prolongada. La capacidad discriminatoria de cada escala, se determinó utilizando el área bajo la curva de la “receiver operating characteristic curve” (AUROC). Se realizó un análisis multivariante utilizando como variables de ajuste, aquellas variables que dieron significativas en el análisis univariante.Grado en Medicin

La unificación de la ciencia natural y los límites de la mecánica clásica

Sin resume

Elementos dinámicos de la teoría celular.

Sin resume

Genetic relationship of discrete-time survival with fertility and production in dairy cattle using bivariate models

Bivariate analyses of functional longevity in dairy cattle measured as survival to next lactation (SURV) with milk yield and fertility traits were carried out. A sequential threshold-linear censored model was implemented for the analyses of SURV. Records on 96 642 lactations from 41 170 cows were used to estimate genetic parameters, using animal models, for longevity, 305 d-standardized milk production (MY305), days open (DO) and number of inseminations to conception (INS) in the Spanish Holstein population; 31% and 30% of lactations were censored for DO and INS, respectively. Heritability estimates for SURV and MY305 were 0.11 and 0.27 respectively; while heritability estimates for fertility traits were lower (0.07 for DO and 0.03 for INS). Antagonist genetic correlations were estimated between SURV and fertility (-0.78 and -0.54 for DO and INS, respectively) or production (-0.53 for MY305), suggesting reduced functional longevity with impaired fertility and increased milk production. Longer days open seems to affect survival more than increased INS. Also, high productive cows were more problematic, less functional and more liable to being culled. The results suggest that the sequential threshold model is a method that might be considered at evaluating genetic relationship between discrete-time survival and other traits, due to its flexibility

A haplotype regression approach for genetic evaluation using sequences from the 1000 bull genomes Project

 Haplotypes from sequencing data may improve the prediction accuracy in genomic evaluations as haplotypes are in stronger linkage disequilibrium with quantitative trait loci than markers from SNP chips. This study focuses first, on the creation of haplotypes in a population sample of 450 Holstein animals, with full-sequence data from the 1000 bull genomes project; and second, on incorporating them into the whole genome prediction model. In total, 38,319,258 SNPs (and indels) from Next Generation Sequencing were included in the analysis. After filtering variants with minor allele frequency (MAF< 0.025) 13,912,326 SNPs were available for the haplotypes extraction with findhap.f90. The number of SNPs in the haploblocks was on average 924 SNP (166,552 bp). Unique haplotypes were around 97% in all chromosomes and were ignored leaving 153,428 haplotypes. Estimated haplotypes had a large contribution to the total variance of genomic estimated breeding values for kilogram of protein, Global Type Index, Somatic Cell Score and Days Open (between 32 and 99.9%). Haploblocks containing haplotypes with large effects were selected by filtering for each trait, haplotypes whose effect was larger/lower than the mean plus/minus 3 times the standard deviation (SD) and 1 SD above the mean of the haplotypes effect distribution. Results showed that filtering by 3 SD would not be enough to capture a large proportion of genetic variance, whereas filtering by 1 SD could be useful but model convergence should be considered. Additionally, sequence haplotypes were able to capture additional genetic variance to the polygenic effect for traits undergoing lower selection intensity like fertility and health traits

Invited review: Recursive models in animal breeding: Interpretation, limitations, and extensions

Structural equation models allow causal effects between 2 or more variables to be considered and can postulate unidirectional (recursive models; RM) or bidirectional (simultaneous models) causality between variables. This review evaluated the properties of RM in animal breeding and how to interpret the genetic parameters and the corresponding estimated breeding values. In many cases, RM and mixed multitrait models (MTM) are statistically equivalent, although subject to the assumption of variance-covariance matrices and restrictions imposed for achieving model identification. Inference under RM requires imposing some restrictions on the (co)variance matrix or on the location parameters. The estimates of the variance components and the breeding values can be transformed from RM to MTM, although the biological interpretation differs. In the MTM, the breeding values predict the full influence of the additive genetic effects on the traits and should be used for breeding purposes. In contrast, the RM breeding values express the additive genetic effect while holding the causal traits constant. The differences between the additive genetic effect in RM and MTM can be used to identify the genomic regions that affect the additive genetic variation of traits directly or causally mediated for another trait or traits. Furthermore, we presented some extensions of the RM that are useful for modeling quantitative traits with alternative assumptions. The equivalence of RM and MTM can be used to infer causal effects on sequentially expressed traits by manipulating the residual (co)variance matrix under the MTM. Further, RM can be implemented to analyze causality between traits that might differ among subgroups or within the parametric space of the independent traits. In addition, RM can be expanded to create models that introduce some degree of regularization in the recursive structure that aims to estimate a large number of recursive parameters. Finally, RM can be used in some cases for operational reasons, although there is no causality between traits

La doble naturaleza de la naturaleza y la cultura de las dos culturas

Ciertas doctrinas filosóficas defienden de un modo que impide - reconocer los supuestos metat'ísicos y epistemológicos de la ciencia moderna la visión de acuerdo con la cual deben distinguirse dos for ---- mas de aproximación al conocimiento de la naturaleza: una filosófica, científica la otra. Este traba¡o intenta mostrar que puede hacerse una interpretación alternativa de las relaciones entre ciencia y filosofía