the use of global and contextual information by individuals with autism

The aim of this thesis was to investigate whether individuals with autism lack a natural drive towards central coherence as predicted by weak central coherence theory (Frith, 1989). To investigate the nature of this difficulty, two main areas of proposed impairment, context (Experiments 1-9) and global processing (Experiment 10), were separated out. In Experiments 1-3 a method was developed to test the ability to use context information in the visual and verbal domains. Results showed that the performance of individuals with autism was facilitated by the provision of visual and verbal context information. Experiment 4 showed that the same children were able to use semantic category information to aid recall. However in Experiment 5 the same individuals had difficulties with a sentence processing task when using sentence context to disambiguate homographs. Experiments 6-9 examined two possible alternative explanations for the difficulties in Experiment 5. The results of these experiments indicated that the difficulties in Experiment 5 were not due to a failure is using context when targets are embedded in the context (Experiment 6). It remains to be tested whether the difficulties are related to the processing of ambiguous information as Experiments 8-9 failed to develop a method to examine this possibility. Having established that the impairment in using context was highly specific to the use of sentence context to disambiguate homographs, Experiment 10 moved away from examining context to study a different measure of central coherence, global processing by use of a face recognition task. The results of this study have confirmed that there is a deficit in the ability to process global information in autism. However further confirmation of a global impairment will be needed by use of non-facial tasks. In summary, the findings fail to support the claim of a general impairment in autism regarding central coherence

Study of van roadworthiness considering their maintenance and periodic inspection. The Spanish case

In Europe, traffic road safety has clearly improved due to many factors. One of them is the improvement of the roadworthiness. However, accidents of vans and light goods vehicles (LGV) have not followed the decreasing tendency of other vehicles. Several studies suggest that vehicle defects are relevant to the cause of accidents. It would be ideal if vehicle owners continuously kept their vehicles in compliance with the roadworthiness standards. Another important aspect to operate with roadworthy vans is the maintenance programs. It is probable that many van owners do not adequately maintain their vehicles or the maintenance programs are not sufficient with the periodic motor vehicle inspections (PMVI) intervals or with the items inspected. This paper analyses the maintenance schedules and PMVI of vans in order to assess the influence of these parameters in their higher accident rate. The conclusions provided can enable public administrations to modify enforcement laws, regarding time control of driving and PMVI.Proyecto financiado por el Ministerio de Fomento en el marco del Plan I+D+i 2008/2011: Desarrollo y aplicación de una metodología integrada para el estudio de los accidentes de tráfico con implicación de furgonetas (P24/08)”. FURGOSEG

International Transmission of Medium-Term Technology Cycles: Evidence from Spain as a Recipient Country

This paper documents stylized facts of international medium-term business cycles by exploring the pattern of comovement between a catching-up economy, Spain, and each of the obvious candidate countries to technological leadership of the 1950-2007 period, the U.S., France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. A remarkable feature of the international medium-term business cycle is the strong, positive lead displayed by the U.S. technology and terms of trade cycles over Spain's macroeconomic aggregates. The corresponding evidence when the counterpart to Spain is a large European economy is weaker, particularly in the case of Europe's medium-term technology cycles. Non-parametric tests results suggest that, over the medium-term cycle, a shift towards more economic integration may not necessarily be associated with increased international comovement.Medium-term business cycles; Stylized facts; International comovement; Technology diffusion.

Generalizing the Convex Hull of a Sample: The R Package alphahull

This paper presents the R package alphahull which implements the ñ-convex hull and the ñ-shape of a finite set of points in the plane. These geometric structures provide an informative overview of the shape and properties of the point set. Unlike the convex hull, the ñ-convex hull and the ñ-shape are able to reconstruct non-convex sets. This flexibility make them specially useful in set estimation. Since the implementation is based on the intimate relation of theses constructs with Delaunay triangulations, the R package alphahull also includes functions to compute Voronoi and Delaunay tesselations. The usefulness of the package is illustrated with two small simulation studies on boundary length estimation.

Cuadro de mando integral: caso inditex

Elaboración del Cuadro de Mando Integral para el Grupo Inditex. En un primer lugar se repasa de manera breve la historia de Inditex, dando una visión general de todos sus formatos comerciales en la actualidad. Posteriormente se realiza un análisis del Grupo tanto interno como externo, a través de las herramientas PEST, DAFO y CAME. Seguidamente analizan horizontal y verticalmente la cuenta de Pérdidas y Ganancias y el Balance de Situación. En último lugar se lleva a cabo la elaboración del mapa estratégico y el consiguiente cuadro de mando integral, que agrupa los objetivos de dicho mapa con los indicadores correspondientes.Departamento de Economía Financiera y ContabilidadGrado en Administración y Dirección de Empresa

Putting health in all policies: The National Institute for Welfare Enhancement

Welfare is a rather vague term whose meaning depends on ideology, values and judgments. Material resources are just means to enhance people’s well-being, but growth of the Gross Domestic Production is still the standard measure of the success of a society. Fortunately, recent advances in measuring social performance include health, education and other social outcomes. Because “what we measure affects what we do” it is hoped that social policies will change. The movement Health in all policies and its associated Health Impact Assessment methodology will contribute to it. The task consists of designing transversal policies that consider health and other welfare goals, the short term and long-term implications and intergenerational redistributions of resources. As long as marginal productivity on health outside the healthcare system is higher than inside it, efficiency needs cross-sectoral policies. And fairness needs them even more, because in order to reduce social inequalities in health, a wide social and political response is needed. Unless we reduce the well-documented inefficiencies in our current health care systems the welfare states will fail to consolidate and the overall economic wellbeing could be in serious trouble. In this article we sketched some policy solutions such as pricing according to net benefits of innovation and public encouragement of radical innovation besides the small type incremental and market-led innovation. We proposed an independent agency, the National Institute for Welfare Enhancement to guarantee long term fair and efficient social policies in which health plays a central role.Public health policies; Health Impact Assessment; Welfare; Health in All Policies.

Tratamiento farmacológico de la depresión en el paciente mayor

Introducción: La depresión es un trastorno emocional que causa un sentimiento de tristeza constante y una pérdida de interés en realizar diferentes actividades. También denominada «trastorno depresivo mayor», afecta los sentimientos, los pensamientos y el comportamiento de una persona, y puede causar una variedad de problemas físicos y emocionales. Objetivos: Revisar las evidencias sobre efectividad y seguridad del tratamiento en pacientes mayores, y seleccionar los más adecuados en este tipo de pacientes. Metodología: Revisión bibliográfica en la que se usaron las bases de datos PubMed, Proquest, Medline y guías farmacéuticas. Resultados: Recogen la revisión de distintos ensayos y metanálisis que comparan los distintos grupos de antidepresivos entre sí y frente al placebo. De ellos se consigue demostrar, por una parte, la eficacia/seguridad de estos fármacos y por otra parte el tipo de reacción adversa que son capaces de generar en el paciente mayor. Con la información obtenida se proponen estrategias, para solucionar los posibles problemas relacionados con el tratamiento, de manera que se mejore el cumplimiento terapéutico y la calidad de vida del paciente mayor. Conclusiones: De todos los grupos de antidepresivos se consiguen identificar a los inhibidores de la recaptación de serotonina como los más eficaces y mejor tolerados, mientras que los antidepresivos tricíclicos se establecen como el grupo de antidepresivos con más riesgo de producir manifestación adversa en el paciente mayorUniversidad de Sevilla. Grado en Farmaci

Políticas institucionales sobre accesibilidad en la educación superior apoyada en entornos virtuales

Al suscribir la Convención sobre los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, los Estados Partes se comprometieron a revisar sus políticas públicas y el marco jurídico que las expresa. En este marco, la accesibilidad deviene en Política de Estado: es una cuestión de derechos humanos y un atributo de calidad del diseño para evitar la discriminación por razones de discapacidad. En la gestión académica, las políticas institucionales atraviesan el diseño curricular de las carreras ofrecidas, los planes de trabajo del equipo docente, sus prácticas y las tecnologías mediadoras de los aprendizajes. En cada una de ellas se esconden barreras que perturban o impiden completar los estudios superiores. En este artículo se presenta el proyecto de tesis de Maestría en Gestión Universitaria. Recupera aprendizajes y hallazgos de trabajos anteriores, en particular, el Proyecto ESVI-AL, financiado por el Programa Alfa 3 de la Unión Europea y los radicados en el GICEC.Fil: López, Alicia Beatriz. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales; Argentina