Violencia juvenil exogrupal : hacia la construcción de un modelo causal.

Estudiar la percepción personal y grupal de normas y valores asumidos, imágenes y creencias estereotipadas, códigos y esquemas sociales cristalizados (actitudes individuales y grupales), rutas y trayectorias particulares en relación con la violencia exogrupal juvenil. Validar cualitativamente la Teoría del Comportamiento Planificado y, eventualmente, proponer modificaciones teóricas, cuya eficacia explicativa pueda ser comprobada. 19 jóvenes (17 varones y 2 mujeres) de edades entre 15 y 25 años, residentes en Madrid. Todos ellos cumplen los criterios de selección: durante el último año han agredido físicamente, en dos o más ocasiones y en tanto que miembros de grupo, a una o más personas pertenecientes a otros grupos. Entrevistas individuales en profundidad, semiestructuradas, con bajo nivel de directividad y aplicadas en dos sesiones. El protocolo de la primera incluía las variables y los factores más citados por la literatura especializada, estructurada en tres niveles: macrosocial (cultura y socioeconomía), mesosocial (identidad social) y microsocial (identidad personal y fenomenología de la conducta). Para la segunda sesión se elaboró, partiendo del análisis de la primera entrevista, un guión personalizado con una parte común y una parte adaptada a las peculiaridades del informador y de su grupo. Las entrevistas fueron grabadas y transcritas posteriormente. Con el material resultante se realizó un análisis de contenido para operativizar las variables incluidas en el modelo causal desarrollado. También se desarrolló un procedimiento de análisis cualitativo de carácter mixto, con el objetivo de formular, refutar y modificar hipótesis sobre el comportamiento exogrupal violento. Las declaraciones de los sujetos fueron categorizadas y codificadas mediante el programa ARS-NUDIST (Non-Numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorizing). Se usaron entrevistas. Se ha evidenciado el carácter procesual y sistémico de la adquisición y evolución de la violencia exogrupal juvenil. No debe colegirse de esta premisa que este comportamiento sea resultado en cada ocasión de la incidencia de todos los factores analizados; se postula una influencia progresiva convergente de variables macro, meso y microsociales que predisponen al joven a conformarse a la violencia y, después, en ocasiones, a interiorizarla como elemento básico de su identidad social y/o personal. El apoyo social y la autoestima individual y social, concentrados ambos, de forma preferente, en el grupo de iguales, que parece sustituir o complementar la escasa o inadecuada influencia socializadora de otras personas, grupos e instituciones; complementariamente, se valora muy negativamente la soledad, el aislamiento. Los programas preventivos y de intervención deberían evitar la tentación de psicologizar el problema, centrándose en el individuo, propiciando alternativa o complementariamente el desarrollo de normas y conductas prosociales y generalizables a diferentes ámbitos. El principal objetivo de los programas para reducir la violencia exogrupal es la promoción de identidades personal y social positivas, a través de la realización de conductas valoradas socialmente.

Diferencias entre coeducación y educación separada en las conductas de riesgo y autoconcepto en alumnos de educación secundaria.

Determinar si los centros de educación separada en secundaria ofrecen una alternativa a la coeducación más eficaz para conseguir una educación integral óptima. . Muestra compuesta por 1532 alumnos de segundo y tercero de ESO de edades comprendidas entre los 13 y los 15 años. Los centros pertenecen a tres comunidades autónomas: Madrid, Cataluña y Murcia, en total: 12 centros: 5 mixtos, 3 femeninos y 4 masculinos. Se seleccionaron clases enteras tratando de igualar los grupos a comparar respecto a: nivel socioeconómico, edad, curso académico y sexo. A cada alumno se le aplicaron los siguientes cuestionarios: cuestionarios de autoestima (Coopersmith, 1986); Cuestionario sobre Conductas de Riesgo (González Molina, 2006); Escala de Valores (Mitchell, 1984) e Inventario de Transtornos de la Conducta Alimentaria (EDI, Garner y col., 1983). Se practica un análisis de los resultados descriptivo y correlacional buscando diferencias significativas entre las muestras. El análisis cualitativo se ha realizado a partir de una serie de entrevistas semiestructuradas realizadas a los siguientes sujetos: alumnos de segundo y tercero de ESO, profesores de esos mismos cursos y padres de los alumnos. Se entrevista a un total de 48 sujetos. las entrevistas fueron analizadas según la estructura del programa NUDIST para tratamiento de los datos cualitativos, programa que va más allá del modelo de archivador que se limita a codificar y recuperar el texto. NUDIST (Non-numerical Unstructured Data, Indexing, Searching and Theorising) Se comparan los resultados de los análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo.. La coeducación favorece más a los chicos, sin que se pueda relacionar este dato con el éxito escolar. El autoconcepto más bajo se encuentra en el grupo de mujeres de coeducación, existiendo diferencias con las mujeres que reciben educación en centros de un solo sexo, de lo que se deduce que la problemática que tienen las adolescentes en esta etapa de su vida se acrecienta cuando están en centros de coeducación. Los alumnos de centros de educación separada poseen un comportamiento más sincero, se arrepienten con mayor naturalidad de aquello que consideran que han hecho mal y son más capaces de reconocer que les gustaría cambiar aspectos de su carácter. En relación con los valores, los alumnos de educación separada se diferencian claramente de los de coeducación en tener puntuaciones más altas en valores religiosos y tenerlas más bajas en valores hedonistas e individualistas. Desde el punto de vista metodológico resulta muy difícil en España encontrar centros de educación separada que sean aconfesionales. Los centros privados masculinos son los segundos en valores religiosos pero ocupan el primer lugar a la hora de valorar el status social. Hay mayor miedo a la madurez en centros de coeducación y mayor perfeccionismo en los de no-coeducación. Los aspectos personales y éticos deben de formar parte integrante de la educación puesto que es la autonomía del individuo la que mejor expresa su racionalidad. El planteamiento de esta investigación ha querido enfrentar los prejuicios establecidos contra la no-coeducación que bien pudiera ser un medio eficaz por el que habría que abogar aunque solo fuera de una manera experimental..

Visual analysis of image collections

Multidimensional Visualization techniques are invaluable tools for analysis of structured and unstructured data with variable dimensionality. This paper introduces PEx-Image-Projection Explorer for Images-a tool aimed at supporting analysis of image collections. The tool supports a methodology that employs interactive visualizations to aid user-driven feature detection and classification tasks, thus offering improved analysis and exploration capabilities. The visual mappings employ similarity-based multidimensional projections and point placement to layout the data on a plane for visual exploration. In addition to its application to image databases, we also illustrate how the proposed approach can be successfully employed in simultaneous analysis of different data types, such as text and images, offering a common visual representation for data expressed in different modalities.

Knowledge disclosure as a weapon in technological change battles: straight shot or backfire?

This work aims at evaluating how effective is knowledge disclosure in attenuating institutional negative reactions caused by uncertainties brought by firms’ new strategies that respond to novel technologies. The empirical setting is from an era of technological ferment, the period of the introduction of the voice over internet protocol (VoIP) in the USA in the early 2000’s. This technology led to the convergence of the wireline telecommu- nications and cable television industries. The Institutional Brokers’ Estimate System (also known as the I/B/E/S system) was used to capture reactions of securities analysts, a revealed important source of institutional pressure on firms’ strategies. For assessing knowledge disclosure, a coding technique and a established content analysis framework were used to quantitatively measure the non-numerical and unstructured data of transcripts of business events occurred at that time. Eventually, several binary response models were tested in order to assess the effect of knowledge disclosure on the probability of institutional positive reactions. The findings are that the odds of favorable institutional reactions increase when a specific kind of knowledge is disclosed. It can be concluded that knowledge disclosure can be considered as a weapon in technological changes situations, attenuating adverse institutional reactions to the companies’ strategies in environments of technological changes.

Architecture for peer-to-peer databases with routing queries using ant colony algorithm and semantic support

In a peer-to-peer network, the nodes interact with each other by sharing resources, services and information. Many applications have been developed using such networks, being a class of such applications are peer-to-peer databases. The peer-to-peer databases systems allow the sharing of unstructured data, being able to integrate data from several sources, without the need of large investments, because they are used existing repositories. However, the high flexibility and dynamicity of networks the network, as well as the absence of a centralized management of information, becomes complex the process of locating information among various participants in the network. In this context, this paper presents original contributions by a proposed architecture for a routing system that uses the Ant Colony algorithm to optimize the search for desired information supported by ontologies to add semantics to shared data, enabling integration among heterogeneous databases and the while seeking to reduce the message traffic on the network without causing losses in the amount of responses, confirmed by the improve of 22.5% in this amount. © 2011 IEEE.

Contribuição das redes de T.I. para formulação da estratégia e gestão das empresas

Pós-graduação em Engenharia de Produção - FEB

Mining free-text medical records for companion animal enteric syndrome surveillance.

Large amounts of animal health care data are present in veterinary electronic medical records (EMR) and they present an opportunity for companion animal disease surveillance. Veterinary patient records are largely in free-text without clinical coding or fixed vocabulary. Text-mining, a computer and information technology application, is needed to identify cases of interest and to add structure to the otherwise unstructured data. In this study EMR's were extracted from veterinary management programs of 12 participating veterinary practices and stored in a data warehouse. Using commercially available text-mining software (WordStat™), we developed a categorization dictionary that could be used to automatically classify and extract enteric syndrome cases from the warehoused electronic medical records. The diagnostic accuracy of the text-miner for retrieving cases of enteric syndrome was measured against human reviewers who independently categorized a random sample of 2500 cases as enteric syndrome positive or negative. Compared to the reviewers, the text-miner retrieved cases with enteric signs with a sensitivity of 87.6% (95%CI, 80.4-92.9%) and a specificity of 99.3% (95%CI, 98.9-99.6%). Automatic and accurate detection of enteric syndrome cases provides an opportunity for community surveillance of enteric pathogens in companion animals.

BIOMEDICAL LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING AND EXTRACTION (BLUE-TEXT): A MINIMAL SYNTACTIC, SEMANTIC METHOD

Clinical text understanding (CTU) is of interest to health informatics because critical clinical information frequently represented as unconstrained text in electronic health records are extensively used by human experts to guide clinical practice, decision making, and to document delivery of care, but are largely unusable by information systems for queries and computations. Recent initiatives advocating for translational research call for generation of technologies that can integrate structured clinical data with unstructured data, provide a unified interface to all data, and contextualize clinical information for reuse in multidisciplinary and collaborative environment envisioned by CTSA program. This implies that technologies for the processing and interpretation of clinical text should be evaluated not only in terms of their validity and reliability in their intended environment, but also in light of their interoperability, and ability to support information integration and contextualization in a distributed and dynamic environment. This vision adds a new layer of information representation requirements that needs to be accounted for when conceptualizing implementation or acquisition of clinical text processing tools and technologies for multidisciplinary research. On the other hand, electronic health records frequently contain unconstrained clinical text with high variability in use of terms and documentation practices, and without commitmentto grammatical or syntactic structure of the language (e.g. Triage notes, physician and nurse notes, chief complaints, etc). This hinders performance of natural language processing technologies which typically rely heavily on the syntax of language and grammatical structure of the text. This document introduces our method to transform unconstrained clinical text found in electronic health information systems to a formal (computationally understandable) representation that is suitable for querying, integration, contextualization and reuse, and is resilient to the grammatical and syntactic irregularities of the clinical text. We present our design rationale, method, and results of evaluation in processing chief complaints and triage notes from 8 different emergency departments in Houston Texas. At the end, we will discuss significance of our contribution in enabling use of clinical text in a practical bio-surveillance setting.

Diseño e implementación de un módulo para la estructuración de notas clínicas

El presente Trabajo Fin de Grado (TFG) surge de la necesidad de disponer de tecnologías que faciliten el Procesamiento de Lenguaje Natural (NLP) en español dentro del sector de la medicina. Centrado concretamente en la extracción de conocimiento de las historias clínicas electrónicas (HCE), que recogen toda la información relacionada con la salud del paciente y en particular, de los documentos recogidos en dichas historias, pretende la obtención de todos los términos relacionados con la medicina. El Procesamiento de Lenguaje Natural permite la obtención de datos estructurados a partir de información no estructurada. Estas técnicas permiten un análisis de texto que genera etiquetas aportando significado semántico a las palabras para la manipulación de información. A partir de la investigación realizada del estado del arte en NLP y de las tecnologías existentes para otras lenguas, se propone como solución un módulo de anotación de términos médicos extraídos de documentos clínicos. Como términos médicos se han considerado síntomas, enfermedades, partes del cuerpo o tratamientos obtenidos de UMLS, una ontología categorizada que agrega distintas fuentes de datos médicos. Se ha realizado el diseño y la implementación del módulo así como el análisis de los resultados obtenidos realizando una evaluación con treinta y dos documentos que contenían 1372 menciones de terminología médica y que han dado un resultado medio de Precisión: 70,4%, Recall: 36,2%, Accuracy: 31,4% y F-Measure: 47,2%.---ABSTRACT---This Final Thesis arises from the need for technologies that facilitate the Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Spanish in the medical sector. Specifically it is focused on extracting knowledge from Electronic Health Records (EHR), which contain all the information related to the patient's health and, in particular, it expects to obtain all the terms related to medicine from the documents contained in these records. Natural Language Processing allows us to obtain structured information from unstructured data. These techniques enable analysis of text generating labels providing semantic meaning to words for handling information. From the investigation of the state of the art in NLP and existing technologies in other languages, an annotation module of medical terms extracted from clinical documents is proposed as a solution. Symptoms, diseases, body parts or treatments are considered part of the medical terms contained in UMLS ontology which is categorized joining different sources of medical data. This project has completed the design and implementation of a module and the analysis of the results have been obtained. Thirty two documents which contain 1372 mentions of medical terminology have been evaluated and the average results obtained are: Precision: 70.4% Recall: 36.2% Accuracy: 31.4% and F-Measure: 47.2%.

Técnicas de machine learning para la detección de la negación en textos clínicos en español

En los últimos años han surgido nuevos campos de las tecnologías de la información que exploran el tratamiento de la gran cantidad de datos digitales existentes y cómo transformarlos en conocimiento explícito. Las técnicas de Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural (NLP) son capaces de extraer información de los textos digitales presentados en forma narrativa. Además, las técnicas de machine learning clasifican instancias o ejemplos en función de sus atributos, en distintas categorías, aprendiendo de otros previamente clasificados. Los textos clínicos son una gran fuente de información no estructurada; en consecuencia, información no explotada en su totalidad. Algunos términos usados en textos clínicos se encuentran en una situación de afirmación, negación, hipótesis o histórica. La detección de esta situación es necesaria para la estructuración de información, pero a su vez tiene una gran complejidad. Extrayendo características lingüísticas de los elementos, o tokens, de los textos mediante NLP; transformando estos tokens en instancias y las características en atributos, podemos mediante técnicas de machine learning clasificarlos con el objetivo de detectar si se encuentran afirmados, negados, hipotéticos o históricos. La selección de los atributos que cada token debe tener para su clasificación, así como la selección del algoritmo de machine learning utilizado son elementos cruciales para la clasificación. Son, de hecho, los elementos que componen el modelo de clasificación. Consecuentemente, este trabajo aborda el proceso de extracción de características, selección de atributos y selección del algoritmo de machine learning para la detección de la negación en textos clínicos en español. Se expone un modelo para la clasificación que, mediante el algoritmo J48 y 35 atributos obtenidos de características lingüísticas (morfológicas y sintácticas) y disparadores de negación, detecta si un token está negado en 465 frases provenientes de textos clínicos con un F-Score del 73%, una exhaustividad del 66% y una precisión del 81% con una validación cruzada de 10 iteraciones. ---ABSTRACT--- New information technologies have emerged in the recent years which explore the processing of the huge amount of existing digital data and its transformation into knowledge. Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques are able to extract certain features from digital texts. Additionally, through machine learning techniques it is feasible to classify instances according to different categories, learning from others previously classified. Clinical texts contain great amount of unstructured data, therefore information not fully exploited. Some terms (tokens) in clinical texts appear in different situations such as affirmed, negated, hypothetic or historic. Detecting this situation is necessary for the structuring of this data, however not simple. It is possible to detect whether if a token is negated, affirmed, hypothetic or historic by extracting its linguistic features by NLP; transforming these tokens into instances, the features into attributes, and classifying these instances through machine learning techniques. Selecting the attributes each instance must have, and choosing the machine learning algorithm are crucial issues for the classification. In fact, these elements set the classification model. Consequently, this work approaches the features retrieval as well as the attributes and algorithm selection process used by machine learning techniques for the detection of negation in clinical texts in Spanish. We present a classification model which, through J48 algorithm and 35 attributes from linguistic features (morphologic and syntactic) and negation triggers, detects whether if a token is negated in 465 sentences from historical records, with a result of 73% FScore, 66% recall and 81% precision using a 10-fold cross-validation.

LEGOLANG: técnicas de deconstrucción aplicadas a las tecnologías del lenguaje humano

El objetivo de este proyecto se basa en la necesidad de replantearse la filosofía clásica del TLH para adecuarse tanto a las fuentes disponibles actualmente (datos no estructurados con multi-modalidad, multi-lingualidad y diferentes grados de formalidad) como a las necesidades reales de los usuarios finales. Para conseguir este objetivo es necesario integrar tanto la comprensión como la generación del lenguaje humano en un modelo único (modelo LEGOLANG) basado en técnicas de deconstrucción de la lengua, independiente de su aplicación final y de la variante de lenguaje humano elegida para expresar el conocimiento.

Clinical Phenotyping in the Prediction of Pediatric Acute Kidney Injury

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Facing a paradigm shift in professional credentialing: Preparedness of registered dietitians for Professional Development 2001

In the year 2001, the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR) will begin a new process of recertifying Registered Dietitians (RD) using a self-directed lifelong learning portfolio model. The model, entitled Professional Development 2001 (PD 2001), is designed to increase competency through targeted learning. This portfolio consists of five steps: reflection, learning needs assessment, formulation of a learning plan, maintenance of a learning log, and evaluation of the learning plan. By targeting learning, PD 2001 is predicted to foster more up-to-date practitioners than the current method that requires only a quantity of continuing education hours. This is the first major change in the credentialing system since 1975. The success or failure of the new system will impact the future of approximately 60,000 practitioners. The purpose of this study was to determine the readiness of RDs to change to the new system. Since the model is dependent on setting goals and developing learning plans, this study examined the methods dietitians use to determine their five-year goals and direction in practice. It also determined RD's attitudes towards PD 2001 and identified some of the factors that influenced their beliefs. A dual methodological design using focus groups and questionnaires was utilized. Sixteen focus groups were held during state dietetic association meetings. Demographic data was collected on the 132 registered dietitians who participated in the focus groups using a self-administered questionnaire. The audiotaped sessions were transcribed into 643 pages of text and analyzed using Non-numerical Unstructured Data - Indexing Searching and Theorizing (NUD*IST version 4). Thirty-four of the 132 participants (26%) had formal five-year goals. Fifty-four participants (41%) performed annual self-assessments. In general, dietitians did not currently have professional goals nor conduct self-assessments and they claimed they did not have the skills or confidence to perform these tasks. Major barriers to successful implementation of PD 2001 are uncertainty, misinterpretation, and misinformation about the process and purpose, which in turn contribute to negative impressions. Renewed vigor to provide a positive, accurate message along with presenting goal-setting strategies will be necessary for better acceptance of this professional development process. ^

Identidade e imagem da marca: uma análise comparativa em uma empresa do setor de serviços de telecomunicações

In a highly connected society, avid for information and technological innovations, constantly changing the consumption patterns, the brand management strategy occupies a growing place. Allied with the increased competition among companies, the brand that can differentiate in consumers’ minds becomes strong. This aspect is even more important in the service industry, where the consumer experience, the definition and support of the brand’s values are vital to the continued strength of both your identity and image. These aspects are seen as a process of communication in which the way the image is developed in the minds of consumers comes from how identity is constructed and transmitted to them (DE CHERNATONY; DRURY; SEGAL-HORN, 2004). Considering the dynamic and complex scenario, this study aims to identify and analyze the possible convergences or divergences between the identity built by the organization and the brand image perceived by consumers of a telecommunications services company. To achieve this objective, the model proposed by De Chernatony, Drury and Segal-Horn (2004) was used as a theoretical basis, which addresses the transformation of identity in brand image, specifically under the perspective of Pontes (2009). For him, customers are more motivated to buy and consume products that they believe that take a complementary image that they have of themselves, and proposes the existence of multiple selves: the perceived, which refers to the employees and the organization’s management opinions on the brand; the ideal, which deals with effective brand identity thought by its leaders, the vision of what it should be; social, which shows how managers think that consumers see it; the apparent, formed by the image of the brand by customers; and finally the real self, that would be an integrated composite of all of these visions. In this regard, a case study was made in a telecommunications company with regional actions, from a qualitative and quantitative approach. It was identified the company’s vision through semi-structured interviews with marketing managers and analysis of documents related to the brand strategy. The point of view of consumers was addressed for text mining techniques applied to internal unstructured data coming from the collection of posts made on Facebook and Twitter, related to the brand, and customer interaction with the company through these social networks. The results showed the importance of the concepts of identity and brand image, and how they are interrelated. Moreover, the qualitative analysis it was shown that the vision of marketing executives is quite close and in line with the Brand Book, showing that there is a cohesive and well disseminated speech internally in the organization. On the other hand, when evaluating the customer's point of view there was no specific comments on the brand, and it was not possible to identify the evaluation of Algar Telecom image by consumers. Nevertheless, other relevant aspects could be identified for the consolidation of the brand identity, as the occurrence of a number of complaints, especially regarding the internet as well as the concern of customers for the quality of the provision of services.

Essays on Machine Learning and Hedonic Models

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08