PInCom project: SaaS Big Data Platform for and Communication Channels

The problem of optimization will be addressed in this article, based on the premise that the successful implementation of Big Data solutions requires as a determining factor not only effective -it is assumed- but the efficiency of the responsiveness of management information get the best value offered by the digital and technological environment for gaining knowledge. In adopting Big Data strategies should be identified storage technologies and appropriate extraction to enable professionals and companies from different sectors to realize the full potential of the data. A success story is the solution PInCom: Intelligent-Communications Platform that aims customer loyalty by sending multimedia communications across heterogeneous transmission channels

Consistencies and Discrepancies in Communication Between Parents and Teenage Children About Sexuality

The family is one of the most important socializing agents in adolescent sex education. However, multiple barriers to communication within families have been identified. Therefore, this study aimed to characterize and understand the processes by which parents and their adolescent children communicate about sexuality. Two questionnaires were completed by 711 fathers/mothers and 566 male/female students in 21 schools in Cali (Colombia), and 15 discussion groups were formed. The results showed that conversations about sexuality focused on protection for women and on sexuality promotion for men. Furthermore, it was found that greater fluency exists in father/son and mother/daughter conversations. The largest discrepancy between parents and teenagers was the adults' belief that it is sufficient to mention certain topics in a directive manner and the children's expectations that parents will discuss the value and dynamics of the sexual experience. Embarrassment and lack of communication tools hinder communication processes.La familia es uno de los agentes socializadores más importantes para la formación en sexualidad de los adolescentes. Sin embargo, se han identificado múltiples barreras en los procesos de comunicación. Por este motivo, esta investigación tuvo como objetivo caracterizar y comprender los procesos de comunicación en sexualidad entre los padres de familia y sus hijos adolescentes en la ciudad de Cali, Colombia. Se aplicaron dos cuestionarios a 711 padres/madres de familia y 566 estudiantes hombres/mujeres en 21 colegios de Cali (Colombia) y se desarrollaron 15 grupos de discusión. Se encontraron discursos de protección frente a la sexualidad hacia las mujeres y de incitación hacia los hombres. Además, se identificó que existe mayor fluidez en las conversaciones entre padre/hijo y madre/hija. La mayor discrepancia es que los adultos consideran suficiente mencionar de manera directiva ciertos temas, mientras que sus hijos/as esperan discusiones en torno a valores y dinámicas de la experiencia sexual. La vergüenza y falta de herramientas de comunicación dificultan estos procesos.A família é um dos principais agentes de socialização na formação da sexualidade adolescente. No entanto, diferentes barreiras de comunicação são identificadas. Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo caracterizar e compreender os processos de comunicação sobre sexualidade entre os pais e seus filhos adolescentes na cidade de Cali, Colômbia. Dois questionários foram aplicados a 711 pais/ mães e 566 alunos homens/mulheres em 21 escolas em Cali (Colômbia). Foram também conduzidos 15 grupos focais. Foram encontrados discursos de proteção sobre a sexualidade, no caso das mulheres, e incitamento para os homens. Foram relatadas mais frequentemente as conversas entre pai/filho do que entre mãe/filha. A principal discrepância é que os adultos consideram que é suficiente apresentar de maneira imperativa alguns tópicos, enquanto os seus filhos/as esperam discussões reais sobre valores e dinâmicas da experiência sexual. A vergonha e a falta de ferramentas de comunicação impedem estes processos

Groupwise Non-Rigid Registration with Deep Learning: An Affordable Solution Applied to 2D Cardiac Cine MRI Reconstruction

Groupwise image (GW) registration is customarily used for subsequent processing in medical imaging. However, it is computationally expensive due to repeated calculation of transformations and gradients. In this paper, we propose a deep learning (DL) architecture that achieves GW elastic registration of a 2D dynamic sequence on an affordable average GPU. Our solution, referred to as dGW, is a simplified version of the well-known U-net. In our GW solution, the image that the other images are registered to, referred to in the paper as template image, is iteratively obtained together with the registered images. Design and evaluation have been carried out using 2D cine cardiac MR slices from 2 databases respectively consisting of 89 and 41 subjects. The first database was used for training and validation with 66.6–33.3% split. The second one was used for validation (50%) and testing (50%). Additional network hyperparameters, which are—in essence—those that control the transformation smoothness degree, are obtained by means of a forward selection procedure. Our results show a 9-fold runtime reduction with respect to an optimization-based implementation; in addition, making use of the well-known structural similarity (SSIM) index we have obtained significative differences with dGW with respect to an alternative DL solution based on Voxelmorph

Anemias raras y fallos medulares hereditarios

Rare anemias and inherited bone marrow failure syndromes are characterized, respectively, by decreased concentrations of hemoglobin or defects in the production of hematopoietic cells leading to single to multiple lineage cytopenias. They are rare and difficult to diagnose due to clinical, cytological and genetic heterogeneity. In this paper, we first address the diagnosis of rare anemias and their causes including marrow failures, erythrocyte defects and disorders of red cell metabolism factors involved in erythrocyte maturation. Finally, we introduce inherited bone marrow failure syndromes and their associated pathologies such as congenital malformations and tumor predisposition, with particular emphasis on the most common diseases: Fanconi anemia, dyskeratosis congenita, Diamond-Blackfan anemia and Shwachman-Diamond syndrome.Las anemias raras y los fallos medulares hereditarios son enfermedades hematológicas caracterizadas, respectivamente, por una disminución de la concentración de hemoglobina o por diversos grados de defectos en la producción de células hematopoyéticas que conducen desde una citopenia de un solo linaje hasta una de múltiples linajes. Son enfermedades raras y difíciles de diagnosticar debido a la heterogeneidad clínica, citológica y genética. En este artículo abordaremos en primer lugar el diagnóstico de las anemias raras y sus causas principales: fallos medulares, defectos del hematíe y trastornos del metabolismo de los factores de maduración eritrocitario. Seguidamente introduciremos los fallos medulares hereditarios y su patología asociada, como son las malformaciones congénitas y la predisposición tumoral, haciendo especial hincapié en los más frecuentes: la anemia de Fanconi, la disqueratosis congénitca, la anemia de Diamond-Blackfan y el síndrome de Shwachman-Diamond

Photobioreactors based on microalgae-bacteria and purple phototrophic bacteria consortia: A promising technology to reduce the load of veterinary drugs from piggery wastewater

Producción CientíficaTraditional swine manure treatments are not fully effective in the removal of veterinary drugs. Moreover, they are costly and entail a significant carbon footprint in many cases. Innovative biological approaches based on phototrophic microorganisms have recently emerged as promising alternatives to overcome those limitations. This work evaluated the removal of 19 veterinary drugs (i.e., 16 antibiotics, 1 analgesic, 1 anti-parasitic and 1 hormone) from piggery wastewater (PWW) in two open photobioreactors (PBR) operated with a consortium of microalgae-bacteria (AB-PBR) and purple photosynthetic bacteria (PPB-PBR). Multiple hydraulic retention times (HRT), in particular 11, 8 and 4 days, were tested during stage I, II and III, respectively. Ten out of 19 target compounds were detected with inlet drug concentrations ranging from ‘non-detected’ (n.d.) to almost 23,000 ng L−1 for the antibiotic oxytetracycline. Moreover, three of the antibiotics (i.e., enrofloxacin, sulfadiazine and oxytetracycline) were found at concentrations above the analytical linearity range in some or all of the samples under study. AB-PBR supported higher removal efficiencies (REs) than PPB-PBR, except for danofloxacin. Overall, REs progressively decreased when decreasing the HRT. The highest REs (>90%) were observed for doxycycline (95 ± 3%) and oxytetracycline (93 ± 3%) in AB-PBR during stage I. The other drugs, except sulfadimidine that was the most recalcitrant, showed REs above 70% during stage I in the same photobioreactor. In contrast, no removal was observed for danofloxacin in AB-PBR during stage III, sulfadimidine in PPB-PBR during stage III or marbofloxacin in PPB-PBR during the entire experiment.Gobierno regional de Castilla y León- FEDER (CLU 2017-09 and UIC71)EURICA program (Erasmus Mundus Action 2, Strand 1, Lot 15, grant 2013-2587)Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (projects JCI-2015-23304, RED NOVEDAR and CTQ2017-84006-C3-1-R

MNCD: A New Tool for Classifying Parkinson’s Disease in Daily Clinical Practice

Background and objective: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a clinically heterogeneous disorder in which the symptoms and prognosis can be very different among patients. We propose a new simple classification to identify key symptoms and staging in PD. Patients and Methods: Sixteen movement disorders specialists from Spain participated in this project. The classification was consensually approved after a discussion and review process from June to October 2021. The TNM classification and the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) were considered as models in the design. Results: The classification was named MNCD and included 4 major axes: (1) motor symptoms; (2) non-motor symptoms; (3) cognition; (4) dependency for activities of daily living (ADL). Motor axis included 4 sub-axes: (1) motor fluctuations; (2) dyskinesia; (3) axial symptoms; (4) tremor. Four other sub-axes were included in the non-motor axis: (1) neuropsychiatric symptoms; (2) autonomic dysfunction; (3) sleep disturbances and fatigue; (4) pain and sensory disorders. According to the MNCD, 5 stages were considered, from stage 1 (no disabling motor or non-motor symptoms with normal cognition and independency for ADL) to 5 (dementia and dependency for basic ADL). Conclusions: A new simple classification of PD is proposed. The MNCD classification includes 4 major axes and 5 stages to identify key symptoms and monitor the evolution of the disease in patients with PD. It is necessary to apply this proof of concept in a properly designed study

Factores a considerar en la elección del modo de entrada para la internacionalización de la industria hotelera andaluza

El turismo es uno de los principales sectores que sustenta la economía española, y en particular la andaluza. Dentro de éste, la industria hotelera tiene el mayor peso dentro del sector. Debido a una serie de motivos, se hace necesario que las cadenas hoteleras andaluzas deban emprender su proceso de internacionalización. En este trabajo, hacemos una radiografía de la situación actual de las cadenas hoteleras andaluzas. A partir de ahí, y tras un estudio analítico de la internacionalización de la industria hotelera describimos los distintos modos de entrada en el exterior utilizados en la internacionalización de esta industria en particular, y los distintos factores que hay que considerar para la correcta elección de la modalidad de penetración en otros mercados. Nuestro principal objetivo, por tanto, es definir, a partir de las explicaciones tradicionalmente utilizadas en la elección del modo de entrada, un conjunto de factores que han de tenerse en consideración para decidir entre las diferentes opciones de penetración en mercados exteriores. La evidencia empírica la realizamos a partir de una nuestra de 122 establecimientos que las distintas cadenas hoteleras españolas tienen operando fuera de nuestro país. Con la aplicación de la Regresión Logística Ordinal (LOGIT model), y a partir del modelo de Contractor y Kundu (1998), pretendemos establecer qué factores inciden en la elección entre las distintas modalidades. Ésta vendrá determinada por variables relacionadas con el país de destino, variables específicas de la empresa, así como de una serie de factores relacionados con objetivos estratégicos. ABSTRACT The tourism is one of the principal sectors that sustains the Spanish economy, and especially the Andalusian one. Inside this one, the hotel industry has the major weight inside the sector. Due to a series of motives, it becomes necessary that the hotel Andalusian chains should tackle his process of internationalization. In this work, we do a X-ray photography of the current situation of the hotel Andalusian chains. From there, and after an analytical study of the internationalization of the hotel industry we describe the different manners of entry in the exterior used in the internationalization of this industry especially, and the different factors that it is necessary to consider for the correct choice of the modality of penetration other markets. Our principal aim, therefore, is to define, from the explanations traditionally used in the election of the way of entry, a set of factors that have to be had in consideration to decide between the different options of penetration foreign markets. We realize the empirical evidence from a sample of 122 establishments that the different hotel Spanish chains haveo operating out of our country. With the application of the Logistic Ordinal Regression (LOGIT model), and from the model of Contractor and Kundu (1998), we try to establish what factors affect in the choice between the different modalities. This one will come determined by variables related to the country of destination, specific variables of the company, as well as of a series of factors related to strategic aims

Sunitinib and Evofosfamide (TH-302) in Systemic Treatment-Naïve Patients with Grade 1/2 Metastatic Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors: The GETNE-1408 Trial

[Background] Sunitinib (SUN)-induced hypoxia within the tumor could promote the activation of the prodrug evofosfamide (EVO), locally releasing the cytotoxic DNA alkylator bromo-isophosphoramide mustard. SUNEVO, a phase II, open-label, single-arm trial, investigated the potential synergy of SUN plus EVO in advanced progressive pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (panNETs).[Methods] Systemic treatment-naïve patients with advanced or metastatic, unresectable, grade 1/2 panNETs with a Ki67 ≤20%, received EVO 340 mg/m2 on days 8, 15, and 22 every 4 weeks and sunitinib 37.5 mg/day continuously. The primary endpoint was objective response rate, measured every 8 weeks by RECIST version 1.1.[Results] From 2015 to 2018, 17 patients were enrolled. The median age was 62.4 years, 47% had a Ki67 >10%, and 70.6% had liver metastasis. Patients received a median of five and four cycles of SUN and EVO, respectively. After a median follow-up of 15.7 months, 17.6% of patients achieved a complete (n = 1) or partial response (n = 2), and 11 patients had stable disease (64.7%). The median progression-free survival was 10.4 months (95% confidence interval, 2.6–18.0). Treatment-related adverse events (grade ≥3) were observed in 64.7% of the patients, the most frequent being neutropenia (35.3%), fatigue (17.6%), and thrombopenia (11.8%). Treatment discontinuation due to toxicity was reported in 88.2% of the patients. No correlation was found between treatment response and DAXX, ATRX, MEN1, SETD2, and PTEN gene mutations.[Conclusion] SUN plus EVO had a negative toxicity profile that should be taken into account for further clinical research in advanced panNETs. The combination showed moderate activity in terms of treatment response that did not correlate with somatic mutations. (Clinical trial identification number: NCT02402062)[Implications for Practice] Addition of hypoxia-activated prodrugs has been proposed as a potential mechanism to overcome tumor resistance to antiangiogenic agents. Sunitinib and evofosfamide, which were widely proposed as a potential synergistic option, showed modest efficacy in pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (panNETs), reaching a median objective response rate of 17.6% and median progression-free survival of 10.4 months. Treatment response does not correlate with the biomarkers analyzed. The high systemic toxicity, with 88.2% of patients discontinuing the treatment, makes this therapeutic approach unfeasible and encourages future research to overcome panNETs' resistance to antiangiogenic agents with other therapies with a safer profile.This trial was sponsored by Grupo Español de Tumores Neuroendocrinos y Endocrinos (GETNE).Peer reviewe

Bone Marrow Clonogenic Myeloid Progenitors from NPM1-Mutated AML Patients Do Not Harbor the NPM1 Mutation: Implication for the Cell-Of-Origin of NPM1+ AML

The cell-of-origin of NPM1- and FLT3-mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is still a matter of debate. Here, we combined in vitro clonogenic assays with targeted sequencing to gain further insights into the cell-of-origin of NPM1 and FLT3-ITD-mutated AML in diagnostic bone marrow (BM) from nine NPM1+/FLT3-ITD (+/-) AMLs. We reasoned that individually plucked colony forming units (CFUs) are clonal and reflect the progeny of a single stem/progenitor cell. NPM1 and FLT3-ITD mutations seen in the diagnostic blasts were found in only 2/95 and 1/57 individually plucked CFUs, suggesting that BM clonogenic myeloid progenitors in NPM1-mutated and NPM1/FLT3-ITD-mutated AML patients do not harbor such molecular lesions. This supports previous studies on NPM1 mutations as secondary mutations in AML, likely acquired in an expanded pool of committed myeloid progenitors, perhaps CD34-, in line with the CD34-/low phenotype of NPM1-mutated AMLs. This study has important implications on the cell-of-origin of NPM1+ AML, and reinforces that therapeutic targeting of either NPM1 or FLT3-ITD mutations might only have a transient clinical benefit in debulking the leukemia, but is unlikely to be curative since will not target the AML-initiating/preleukemic cells. The absence of NPM1 and FLT3-ITD mutations in normal clonogenic myeloid progenitors is in line with their absence in clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential.We thank CERCA/Generalitat de Catalunya and Fundació Josep Carreras-Obra Social la Caixa for their institutional support. Financial support for this work was obtained from the Generalitat de Catalunya (SGR330) to P.M., the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (SAF2016-80481-R to P.M. and SAF2016-76758-R to I.V.), the Fundación Uno entre Cienmil, the Obra Social La Caixa (ID 100010434, under agreement LCF/PR/HR19/52160011), the Josep Carreras Foundation, the Leo Messi Foundation, and the Banco Santander Foundation to P.M.; and the Spanish Association against cancer (AECC-CI-2015) to C.B. E.A. acknowledges support form “Fundación Hay Esperanza”. P.M. is an investigator of the Spanish Cell Therapy cooperative network (TERCEL)

Superclustering with the Atacama cosmology telescope and dark energy survey. I. Evidence for thermal energy anisotropy using oriented stacking

Lokken et al.The cosmic web contains filamentary structure on a wide range of scales. On the largest scales, superclustering aligns multiple galaxy clusters along intercluster bridges, visible through their thermal Sunyaev–Zel'dovich signal in the cosmic microwave background. We demonstrate a new, flexible method to analyze the hot gas signal from multiscale extended structures. We use a Compton y-map from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) stacked on redMaPPer cluster positions from the optical Dark Energy Survey (DES). Cutout images from the y-map are oriented with large-scale structure information from DES galaxy data such that the superclustering signal is aligned before being overlaid. We find evidence of an extended quadrupole moment of the stacked y signal at the 3.5σ level, demonstrating that the large-scale thermal energy surrounding galaxy clusters is anisotropically distributed. We compare our ACT × DES results with the Buzzard simulations, finding broad agreement. Using simulations, we highlight the promise of this novel technique for constraining the evolution of anisotropic, non-Gaussian structure using future combinations of microwave and optical surveys.J.R.B. was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant Program and a fellowship from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Gravity and Extreme Universe program. A.D.H. acknowledges support from the Sutton Family Chair in Science, Christianity and Cultures. R.H. is a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar, Gravity and the Extreme Universe Program, 2019, and a 2020 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. R.H. is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant Program and the Connaught Fund. The Dunlap Institute is funded through an endowment established by the David Dunlap family and the University of Toronto. J.P.H. acknowledges funding for SZ cluster studies from NSF AAG No. AST-1615657. M.L. acknowledges the support of the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) [PGSD - 559296 - 2021] and the Queen Elizabeth II / Graduate Scholarships in Science and Technology (QEII-GSST). K.M. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of South Africa. This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation through awards AST-0408698, AST-0965625, and AST-1440226 for the ACT project, as well as awards PHY-0355328, PHY-0855887, and PHY-1214379. Funding was also provided by Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) award to UBC. ACT operates in the Parque Astronómico Atacama in northern Chile under the auspices of the Comisión Nacional de Investigación (CONICYT). The development of multichroic detectors and lenses was supported by NASA grants NNX13AE56G and NNX14AB58G. Detector research at NIST was supported by the NIST Innovations in Measurement Science program. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cambridge, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the University of Edinburgh, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de Física d'Altes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michigan, NFS' NOIRLab, the University of Nottingham, The Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of Sussex, Texas A&M University, and the OzDES Membership Consortium. Based in part on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory at NSF's NOIRLab (NOIRLab Prop. ID 2012B-0001; PI: J. Frieman), which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The DES data management system is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant Nos. AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MICINN under grant Nos. ESP2017-89838, PGC2018-094773, PGC2018-102021, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IFAE is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013), including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478. We acknowledge support from the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) do e-Universo (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2). We thank the anonymous referee for providing valuable comments which improved the quality of the manuscript. This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics. This work received support from the U.S. Department of Energy under contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515 at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. This research used computing resources at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, operated under contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.Peer reviewe