Psychometric characteristics of the Spanish version of instruments to measure neck pain disability

Background: The NDI, COM and NPQ are evaluation instruments for disability due to NP. There was no Spanish version of NDI or COM for which psychometric characteristics were known. The objectives of this study were to translate and culturally adapt the Spanish version of the Neck Disability Index Questionnaire (NDI), and the Core Outcome Measure (COM), to validate its use in Spanish speaking patients with non-specific neck pain (NP), and to compare their psychometric characteristics with those of the Spanish version of the Northwick Pain Questionnaire (NPQ).Methods: Translation/re-translation of the English versions of the NDI and the COM was done blindly and independently by a multidisciplinary team. The study was done in 9 primary care Centers and 12 specialty services from 9 regions in Spain, with 221 acute, subacute and chronic patients who visited their physician for NP: 54 in the pilot phase and 167 in the validation phase. Neck pain (VAS), referred pain (VAS), disability (NDI, COM and NPQ), catastrophizing (CSQ) and quality of life (SF-12) were measured on their first visit and 14 days later. Patients' self-assessment was used as the external criterion for pain and disability. In the pilot phase, patients' understanding of each item in the NDI and COM was assessed, and on day 1 test-retest reliability was estimated by giving a second NDI and COM in which the name of the questionnaires and the order of the items had been changed.Results: Comprehensibility of NDI and COM were good. Minutes needed to fill out the questionnaires [median, (P25, P75)]: NDI. 4 (2.2, 10.0), COM: 2.1 (1.0, 4.9). Reliability: [ICC, (95%CI)]: NDI: 0.88 (0.80, 0.93). COM: 0.85 (0.75,0.91). Sensitivity to change: Effect size for patients having worsened, not changed and improved between days 1 and 15, according to the external criterion for disability: NDI: -0.24, 0.15, 0.66; NPQ: -0.14, 0.06, 0.67; COM: 0.05, 0.19, 0.92. Validity: Results of NDI, NPQ and COM were consistent with the external criterion for disability, whereas only those from NDI were consistent with the one for pain. Correlations with VAS, CSQ and SF-12 were similar for NDI and NPQ (absolute values between 0.36 and 0.50 on day 1, between 0.38 and 0.70 on day 15), and slightly lower for COM (between 0.36 and 0.48 on day 1, and between 0.33 and 0.61 on day 15). Correlation between NDI and NPQ: r = 0.84 on day 1, r = 0.91 on day 15. Correlation between COM and NPQ: r = 0.63 on day 1, r = 0.71 on day 15.Conclusion: Although most psychometric characteristics of NDI, NPQ and COM are similar, those from the latter one are worse and its use may lead to patients' evolution seeming more positive than it actually is. NDI seems to be the best instrument for measuring NP-related disability, since its results are the most consistent with patient's assessment of their own clinical status and evolution. It takes two more minutes to answer the NDI than to answer the COM, but it can be reliably filled out by the patient without assistance.

Generic finite-size enhancement of pairing in mesoscopic Fermi systems

The finite-size-dependent enhancement of pairing in mesoscopic Fermi systems is studied under the assumption that the BCS approach is valid and that the two-body force is size independent. Different systems are investigated such as superconducting metallic grains and films as well as atomic nuclei. It is shown that the finite size enhancement of pairing in these systems is in part due to the presence of a surface which accounts quite well for the data of nuclei and explains a good fraction of the enhancement in Al grains.

Generic brands and product differentiation strategies

Generic or own brand products were initially only lesser expensive copies of the branded label alternative, but nowadays, pricing alone is not enough in order to survive in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) or Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)markets. With this in mind manufacturers of generic brands have adapted to this rapidlygrowing niche by investing in design and marketing during the initial phase in order to be perceived as having a quality product comparable to that of the branded products. In addition, they have gone further ahead with a second phase and resorted to innovativeproduct differentiation strategies and even pure innovation in many cases. These strategies have granted generic brands constantly increasing market shares and a position of equals relative to national brands.Using previous analyses and case studies, this paper will provide conceptual and empirical evidence to explain the surprisingly fast growth and penetration of generic supermarket brands, which in their relatively short lifespan, have grown to rival the historical market leaders, the branded products. According to this analysis, the main conclusion is that the growth in generic brands can be explained not only by price competition, but also by the use of innovative product differentiation strategies.

Forest owners' acceptance of incentive based policy instruments in forest biodiversity conservation : a choice experiment based approach

Abstract

The promotion and assessment of generic skills from interdisciplinary teaching teams

The paper explains a teaching project financed by the University of Barcelona (UB). It focuses on ageneric skill of the University of Barcelona, which is defined as "the learning capability andresponsibility”, and in which analytical and synthesis skills are included. It follows a multidisciplinaryapproach including teachers of Mathematics, World Economics and Economic History. All of us sharethe same students during the first and the second course of the grade in Economics at the Faculty ofEconomics and Business. The project has been developed in three stages. The first one has beendone during the first semester of the course 2012/13, being applied to first year students on thesubjects of Mathematics and Economic History. The second phase is being to be done during thesecond semester only on the Economic History subject. A third stage is going to be done next course2013/14 to second year students on the subject of World Economics. Each different teaching teamhas developed specific materials and assessment tools for each one of the subjects included in theproject. The project emphasizes two teaching dimensions: the elaboration of teaching materials topromote the acquisition of generic skills from an interdisciplinary point of view, and the design ofspecific tools to assess such skills. The first results of the first phase of the project shows cleardeficiencies in the analytical skill regarding to first year students.

The promotion and assessment of generic skills from interdisciplinary teaching teams

The paper explains a teaching project financed by the University of Barcelona (UB). It focuses on ageneric skill of the University of Barcelona, which is defined as "the learning capability andresponsibility”, and in which analytical and synthesis skills are included. It follows a multidisciplinaryapproach including teachers of Mathematics, World Economics and Economic History. All of us sharethe same students during the first and the second course of the grade in Economics at the Faculty ofEconomics and Business. The project has been developed in three stages. The first one has beendone during the first semester of the course 2012/13, being applied to first year students on thesubjects of Mathematics and Economic History. The second phase is being to be done during thesecond semester only on the Economic History subject. A third stage is going to be done next course2013/14 to second year students on the subject of World Economics. Each different teaching teamhas developed specific materials and assessment tools for each one of the subjects included in theproject. The project emphasizes two teaching dimensions: the elaboration of teaching materials topromote the acquisition of generic skills from an interdisciplinary point of view, and the design ofspecific tools to assess such skills. The first results of the first phase of the project shows cleardeficiencies in the analytical skill regarding to first year students.

The promotion and assessment of generic skills from interdisciplinary teaching teams

The paper explains a teaching project financed by the University of Barcelona (UB). It focuses on ageneric skill of the University of Barcelona, which is defined as "the learning capability andresponsibility”, and in which analytical and synthesis skills are included. It follows a multidisciplinaryapproach including teachers of Mathematics, World Economics and Economic History. All of us sharethe same students during the first and the second course of the grade in Economics at the Faculty ofEconomics and Business. The project has been developed in three stages. The first one has beendone during the first semester of the course 2012/13, being applied to first year students on thesubjects of Mathematics and Economic History. The second phase is being to be done during thesecond semester only on the Economic History subject. A third stage is going to be done next course2013/14 to second year students on the subject of World Economics. Each different teaching teamhas developed specific materials and assessment tools for each one of the subjects included in theproject. The project emphasizes two teaching dimensions: the elaboration of teaching materials topromote the acquisition of generic skills from an interdisciplinary point of view, and the design ofspecific tools to assess such skills. The first results of the first phase of the project shows cleardeficiencies in the analytical skill regarding to first year students.

A Framework for Building Hypercubes Using MapReduce

The European Space Agency's Gaia mission will create the largest and most precise three dimensional chart of our galaxy (the Milky Way), by providing unprecedented position, parallax, proper motion, and radial velocity measurements for about one billion stars. The resulting catalogue will be made available to the scientific community and will be analyzed in many different ways, including the production of a variety of statistics. The latter will often entail the generation of multidimensional histograms and hypercubes as part of the precomputed statistics for each data release, or for scientific analysis involving either the final data products or the raw data coming from the satellite instruments. In this paper we present and analyze a generic framework that allows the hypercube generation to be easily done within a MapReduce infrastructure, providing all the advantages of the new Big Data analysis paradigmbut without dealing with any specific interface to the lower level distributed system implementation (Hadoop). Furthermore, we show how executing the framework for different data storage model configurations (i.e. row or column oriented) and compression techniques can considerably improve the response time of this type of workload for the currently available simulated data of the mission. In addition, we put forward the advantages and shortcomings of the deployment of the framework on a public cloud provider, benchmark against other popular solutions available (that are not always the best for such ad-hoc applications), and describe some user experiences with the framework, which was employed for a number of dedicated astronomical data analysis techniques workshops.