Investigation of Earlham Community School District Employee’s Personal Use of a School Vehicle, July 6, 2012

We received a complaint in late September 2011 that an Earlham School District employee had borrowed a school vehicle for her personal use for one month, with the Superintendent’s permission. The school board had discussed the circumstances of the borrowed district vehicle in closed session. The complainant believed this was contrary to Iowa law and also believed no action had been taken against the school employee who borrowed the vehicle or the superintendent who allowed the personal use of the vehicle. He was aware the school district’s attorney reviewed the matter and determined the employee and superintendent violated no law or district policies. Since the school board discussed the matter only in closed session, it was unknown what, if any, discipline was taken against the employees and whether such actions were condoned by the district. We agreed to investigate to determine if the actions of school officials or employees violated Iowa law and if the response from the school board was appropriate.

Aplicación de una técnica operativa con carácter discriminatorio en los procesos de selección de personal

Existen técnicas clásicas cuya función es seleccionar aquellas personas que son idóneas para un determinado puesto de trabajo. El punto fundamental consiste en adaptar una persona a un perfíl de tareas que esa persona debe desarrollar y al mismo tiempo esa persona debe sentirse parte integrante de la empresa, para conseguirlo, en el presente trabajo expondremos una nueva técnica para la selección de personal ejecutivo y basada en la teoría de los subconjuntos borrosos dentro de las nuevas técnicas operativas de gestión.

La història cultural i l'intel·lectual professional. Una visió personal

The author exposes the main research lines in the history of local culture. He briefly considers the main lines in cultural contemporary history investigation. The author studies the introduction and development of cultural history based on the concept of intellectual professional in Catalan historiography at a moment when economical and social research were preferred by a large part of local historians.

Identidad personal y subjetividad social: educación y constitución subjetiva

La constitución subjetiva en nuestra sociedad contemporánea debe ser abordada dentro de la compleja trama de relaciones intersubjetivas y desde diferentes formulaciones teóricas. La construcción del sujeto involucra la existencia de un "otro", que le da sentido a su existencia y a la constitución/adquisición de identidades sociales/colectivas. Ese proceso se aborda en términos de representaciones sociales, como expresión del sentido común, que se desarrollan en complejos procesos que involucran estabilidad de largo alcance y antinomias -themata- que definen las situaciones de tensión, inherentes y propias, del devenir del sentido común. Se considerarán cuatro procesos psicosociales: 1) La Identidad como producto intersubjetivo. 2) La Representación social como expresión de la identidad. 3) Los themata como constitutivos de la Representación social. 4) La interdependencia simbólica Yo/Otros. Se ilustrará con ejemplos de dos investigaciones, en Ciers-ed y en Universidad de Buenos Aires sobre educación

Stability and robustness of blood variables in an antidoping context.

Introduction:  With the setting up of the newly Athlete's Biological Passport antidoping programme, novel guidelines have been introduced to guarantee results beyond reproach. We investigated in this context, the effect of storage time on the variables commonly measured for the haematological passport. We also wanted to assess for these variables, the within and between analyzer variations. Methods:  Blood samples were obtained from top level male professional cyclists (27 samples for the first part of the study and 102 for the second part) taking part to major stage races. After collection, they were transported under refrigerated conditions (2 °C < T < 12 °C), delivered to the antidoping laboratory, analysed and then stored at approximately 4 °C to conduct analysis at different time points up to 72 h after delivery. A mixed-model procedure was used to determine the stability of the different variables. Results:  As expected haemoglobin concentration was not affected by storage and showed stability for at least 72 h. Under the conditions of our investigation, the reticulocytes percentage showed a much better stability than previous published data (> 48 h) and the technical comparison of the haematology analyzer demonstrated excellent results. Conclusion:  In conclusion, our data clearly demonstrate that as long as the World Anti-Doping Agency's guidelines are followed rigorously, all blood results reach the quality level required in the antidoping context.

La història cultural i l'intel·lectual professional. Una visió personal

The author exposes the main research lines in the history of local culture. He briefly considers the main lines in cultural contemporary history investigation. The author studies the introduction and development of cultural history based on the concept of intellectual professional in Catalan historiography at a moment when economical and social research were preferred by a large part of local historians.

La depuración del personal del Museo Arqueológico de Barcelona y del Servicio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas después de la Guerra Civil (1939-1941)

Al finalizar la Guerra Civil española (1936-1939), el personal del Museu d' Arqueologia y de la Secció d'Excavacions i Arqueologia del Servei del Patrimoni Artístic, Historic i Científic (SPAHC) de la suprimida Generalitat de Catalunya fue sometido a depuración por parte del Juzgado Militar Especial de Funcionarios de la Diputación Provincial de Barcelona. La llegada como nuevo director de Martín Almagro Basch, en substitución del exiliado Pere Bosch Gimpera, y el resultado de la reorganización subsiguiente marcaron el desarrollo de la investigación arqueológica en Cataluña hasta finales de la década de 1960.

Disordered eating behaviors: what about boys?

PURPOSE: To determine the characteristics specific to boys with disordered eating behaviors (DEB) and the general context in which these DEB occur. METHOD: Data were drawn from the SMASH02 database, a survey carried out among post-mandatory school students in Switzerland aged 16-20 years in 2002. Only males (N=3890) were included, and were classified into into one of four groups based on their level of concern about weight/food and on their eating behaviors, as follows: group 1: one concern without behavior (N=862); group 2: more than one concern without behavior (N=361); group 3: at least one behavior (N=798); and a control group (N=1869), according to previously validated items. Groups were compared for personal, family, school, experience of violence, and health-compromising behaviors variables on the bivariate level. All significant variables were included in a multinomial logistic regression using Stata 9 software. RESULTS: About one-half of the boys reported either a concern or unhealthy eating behavior. Compared with the control group, boys from the three groups were more likely to be students and to report a history of sexual abuse, delinquency, depression, and feeling fat. In addition, boys from group 3 were more likely to report a history of dieting, early puberty, peer teasing, having experienced violence, frequent inebriation, and being overweight. CONCLUSION: DEB concern adolescent males more frequently than thought and seem to be integrated in a general dysfunctional context, in which violence is predominant. Adolescent males also need to be screened for DEB. Moreover, prevention programs should target the increasing social and media pressure regarding boys ideal body shape and raise public consciousness about this phenomenon.

Valoración de pacientes tratados con hemodiálisis según la Ley de Promoción de la Autonomía Personal y Atención a las personas en situación de dependencia

La valoración del grado de dependencia de los pacientes en diálisis ha sido objeto de interés como indicador clínico y organizativo. El objetivo del estudio es conocer el grado de dependencia que presentan las personas sometidas a tratamiento con diálisis en Catalunya, según los criterios de la Ley sobre Promoción de la Autonomía Personal y Atención a las personas en situación de dependencia. Se ha realizado un estudio descriptivo transversal en 42 centros de Cataluña sobre el grado de dependencia de los pacientes en hemodiálisis. La recogida de datos se hizo mediante una encuesta basada en el baremo de la Ley más datos sociodemográfico y características del tratamiento. De los pacientes que componían la población renal de Cataluña fueron considerados por los profesionales sanitarios con algún grado de dependencia 806, de ellos 425 eran hombres y 381 mujeres; un 61% tienen edades superiores a 70 años. El 53% viven en pareja y el 80,1% tenían uno o más hijos. El 77,4% de los pacientes habían sido trabajadores no cualifi cados, y el 65,4% dijeron no tener estudios. Se consideraron no dependientes 137 pacientes, con dependencia moderada 350, con dependencia

El secreto profesional y la protección de datos de carácter personal

El secreto profesional es un elemento de obligado cumplimiento para los profesionales de la salud, entre ellos la matrona. El deber de guardar secreto permite a las mujeres y a sus familias mantener la intimidad personal, y a los profesionales conocer datos, situaciones y sucesos imprescindibles para la asistencia sanitaria. A las matronas, por nuestro ámbito profesional, se nos confían datos referentes a la salud y a la sexualidad de la mujer, entre otros. La protección de estos datos, su custodia, la elaboración de la historia clínica como elemento fundamental para la asistencia continuada y como justificador del buen hacer profesional de la matrona están regulados jurídicamente y tienen, en la actualidad, gran repercusión legal.

Las relaciones actitud-conducta y'otras variables' a partir de la teoría de Fishbein y Ajzena y del modelo LISREL: Estudio empírico

A través de la investigación presentada en este articulo se ha pretendido operacionalizar la parte predictiva de la Teoria de Acción Razonada, propuesta por Fishbein y Ajzen. Para ello, se ha utilizado la reciente metodologia de 10s modelos de ecuaciones estructurales lineales con variables latentes desarrollados por Joreskog y Sorbom, entre otros. Como dominio se ha delimitado el consumo de tabaco en distintas situaciones sociales. Después de estimar y valorar el modelo predictivo especificado desde la Teoria de Fishbein y Ajzen, se estimo y valoro el modelo generalizado propuesto por Bentler y Speckart y se asumió como mas coherente este modelo generalizado. En el trabajo también se plantean una serie de observaciones para optimizar, sobre todo, la parte metodológica de recogida de datos asociados a estos modelos y se presenta una propuesta para operacionalizar todo el sistema teórico de predicción y explicación de las conductas desde la Teoria de Fishbein y Ajzen.

Retaining principal components for discrete variables

The present study discusses retention criteria for principal components analysis (PCA) applied to Likert scale items typical in psychological questionnaires. The main aim is to recommend applied researchers to restrain from relying only on the eigenvalue-than-one criterion; alternative procedures are suggested for adjusting for sampling error. An additional objective is to add evidence on the consequences of applying this rule when PCA is used with discrete variables. The experimental conditions were studied by means of Monte Carlo sampling including several sample sizes, different number of variables and answer alternatives, and four non-normal distributions. The results suggest that even when all the items and thus the underlying dimensions are independent, eigenvalues greater than one are frequent and they can explain up to 80% of the variance in data, meeting the empirical criterion. The consequences of using Kaiser"s rule are illustrated with a clinical psychology example. The size of the eigenvalues resulted to be a function of the sample size and the number of variables, which is also the case for parallel analysis as previous research shows. To enhance the application of alternative criteria, an R package was developed for deciding the number of principal components to retain by means of confidence intervals constructed about the eigenvalues corresponding to lack of relationship between discrete variables.

Spatial behavior in groups: an agent-based approach

We present an agent-based model with the aim of studying how macro-level dynamics of spatial distances among interacting individuals in a closed space emerge from micro-level dyadic and local interactions. Our agents moved on a lattice (referred to as a room) using a model implemented in a computer program called P-Space in order to minimize their dissatisfaction, defined as a function of the discrepancy between the real distance and the ideal, or desired, distance between agents. Ideal distances evolved in accordance with the agent's personal and social space, which changed throughout the dynamics of the interactions among the agents. In the first set of simulations we studied the effects of the parameters of the function that generated ideal distances, and in a second set we explored how group macrolevel behavior depended on model parameters and other variables. We learned that certain parameter values yielded consistent patterns in the agents' personal and social spaces, which in turn led to avoidance and approaching behaviors in the agents. We also found that the spatial behavior of the group of agents as a whole was influenced by the values of the model parameters, as well as by other variables such as the number of agents. Our work demonstrates that the bottom-up approach is a useful way of explaining macro-level spatial behavior. The proposed model is also shown to be a powerful tool for simulating the spatial behavior of groups of interacting individuals.