Bladder cancer index: cross-cultural adaptation into Spanish and psychometric evaluation.

BACKGROUND The Bladder Cancer Index (BCI) is so far the only instrument applicable across all bladder cancer patients, independent of tumor infiltration or treatment applied. We developed a Spanish version of the BCI, and assessed its acceptability and metric properties. METHODS For the adaptation into Spanish we used the forward and back-translation method, expert panels, and cognitive debriefing patient interviews. For the assessment of metric properties we used data from 197 bladder cancer patients from a multi-center prospective study. The Spanish BCI and the SF-36 Health Survey were self-administered before and 12 months after treatment. Reliability was estimated by Cronbach's alpha. Construct validity was assessed through the multi-trait multi-method matrix. The magnitude of change was quantified by effect sizes to assess responsiveness. RESULTS Reliability coefficients ranged 0.75-0.97. The validity analysis confirmed moderate associations between the BCI function and bother subscales for urinary (r = 0.61) and bowel (r = 0.53) domains; conceptual independence among all BCI domains (r ≤ 0.3); and low correlation coefficients with the SF-36 scores, ranging 0.14-0.48. Among patients reporting global improvement at follow-up, pre-post treatment changes were statistically significant for the urinary domain and urinary bother subscale, with effect sizes of 0.38 and 0.53. CONCLUSIONS The Spanish BCI is well accepted, reliable, valid, responsive, and similar in performance compared to the original instrument. These findings support its use, both in Spanish and international studies, as a valuable and comprehensive tool for assessing quality of life across a wide range of bladder cancer patients.

Anàlisi i projecte educatiu i cultural a Sant Aniol de Finestres

Aquest Treball de Pràcticum és un anàlisi del municipi de Sant Aniol de Finestres per conèixer quines són les potencialitats i necessitats i a posteriori presentar una proposta de projecte participatiu amb l’objectiu de dinamitzar el territori. L’anàlisi es realitza a partir d’un treball de camp i d’entrevistes realitzades a diferents habitants del municipi. Finalment, la proposta que es presenta és un espai de criança per infants del municipi menors de 3 anys. Aquest espai vol contribuir en la cohesió social del territori

The positive effects of a protean career attitude for self-initiated expatriates: Cultural adjustment as a mediator

Purpose - The authors sought to explain why and how protean career attitude might influence self-initiated expatriates' (SIEs) experiences positively. A mediation model of cultural adjustment was proposed and empirically evaluated. Design/methodology/approach - Data from 132 SIEs in Germany containing measures of protean career attitude, cultural adjustment, career satisfaction, life satisfaction, and intention to stay in the host country were analysed using path analysis with a bootstrap method. Findings - Empirical results provide support for the authors' proposed model: the positive relations between protean career attitude and the three expatriation outcomes (career satisfaction, life satisfaction and intention to stay in the host country) were mediated by positive cross-cultural adjustment of SIEs. Research limitations/implications - All data were cross-sectional from a single source. The sample size was small and included a large portion of Chinese participants. The study should be replicated with samples in other destination countries, and longitudinal research is suggested. Practical implications - By fostering both a protean career attitude in skilled SIE employees and their cultural adjustment, corporations and receiving countries could be able to retain this international workforce better in times of talent shortage. Originality/value - This study contributes to the scarce research on the conceptual relatedness of protean career attitude and SIEs, as well as to acknowledging the cultural diversity of the SIE population.

CATMA, a comprehensive genome-scale resource for silencing and transcript profiling of Arabidopsis genes.

BACKGROUND: The Complete Arabidopsis Transcript MicroArray (CATMA) initiative combines the efforts of laboratories in eight European countries 1 to deliver gene-specific sequence tags (GSTs) for the Arabidopsis research community. The CATMA initiative offers the power and flexibility to regularly update the GST collection according to evolving knowledge about the gene repertoire. These GST amplicons can easily be reamplified and shared, subsets can be picked at will to print dedicated arrays, and the GSTs can be cloned and used for other functional studies. This ongoing initiative has already produced approximately 24,000 GSTs that have been made publicly available for spotted microarray printing and RNA interference. RESULTS: GSTs from the CATMA version 2 repertoire (CATMAv2, created in 2002) were mapped onto the gene models from two independent Arabidopsis nuclear genome annotation efforts, TIGR5 and PSB-EuGène, to consolidate a list of genes that were targeted by previously designed CATMA tags. A total of 9,027 gene models were not tagged by any amplified CATMAv2 GST, and 2,533 amplified GSTs were no longer predicted to tag an updated gene model. To validate the efficacy of GST mapping criteria and design rules, the predicted and experimentally observed hybridization characteristics associated to GST features were correlated in transcript profiling datasets obtained with the CATMAv2 microarray, confirming the reliability of this platform. To complete the CATMA repertoire, all 9,027 gene models for which no GST had yet been designed were processed with an adjusted version of the Specific Primer and Amplicon Design Software (SPADS). A total of 5,756 novel GSTs were designed and amplified by PCR from genomic DNA. Together with the pre-existing GST collection, this new addition constitutes the CATMAv3 repertoire. It comprises 30,343 unique amplified sequences that tag 24,202 and 23,009 protein-encoding nuclear gene models in the TAIR6 and EuGène genome annotations, respectively. To cover the remaining untagged genes, we identified 543 additional GSTs using less stringent design criteria and designed 990 sequence tags matching multiple members of gene families (Gene Family Tags or GFTs) to cover any remaining untagged genes. These latter 1,533 features constitute the CATMAv4 addition. CONCLUSION: To update the CATMA GST repertoire, we designed 7,289 additional sequence tags, bringing the total number of tagged TAIR6-annotated Arabidopsis nuclear protein-coding genes to 26,173. This resource is used both for the production of spotted microarrays and the large-scale cloning of hairpin RNA silencing vectors. All information about the resulting updated CATMA repertoire is available through the CATMA database http://www.catma.org.

Validation transculturelle de l'Oswestry disability index en français [Cross-cultural validation of the Oswestry disability index in French]

AIM: The aim of this study was to interpret and validate a French version of the Oswestry disability index (ODI), using a cross-cultural validation method. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire was assessed in order to ensure the psychometric characteristics. METHOD: The cross-cultural validation was carried out according to Beaton's methodology. The study was conducted with 41 patients suffering from low back pain. The correlation between the ODI and the Roland-Morris disability questionnaire (RMDQ), the medical outcome survey short form-36 (MOS SF-36) and a pain visual analogical scale (VAS) was assessed. RESULTS: The validity of the Oswestry questionnaire was studied using the Cronbach Alpha coefficient calculation: 0.87 (n=36). The significant correlation between the ODI and RMDQ was 0.8 (P<0.001, n=41) and 0.71 (P<0.001, n=36) for the pain VAS. The correlation between the ODI and certain subscales (physical functioning 0.7 (P<0.001, n=41), physical role 0.49 et bodily pain 0.73 (P<0.001, n=41)) of the MOS SF-36 were equally significant. The reproducibility of the ODI was calculated using the Wilcoxon matched pairs test: there was no significant difference for eight out of ten sections or for the final score. CONCLUSION: This French translation of the ODI should be considered as valid and reliable. It should be used for any future clinical studies carried out using French language patients. Complimentary studies must be completed in order to assess its sensitivity to change in the event of any modifications in the patients functional capacity.

Alternation and Cooperation in a Two-party System: Implications for Resource-Based Developing Economies

This paper studies cooperation in a political system dominated by two opportunistic parties competing in a resource-based economy. Since a binding agreement as an external solution might be difficult to enforce due to the close association between the incumbent party and the government, the paper explores the extent to which co-operation between political parties that alternate in office can rely on self-enforcing strategies to provide an internal solution. We show that, for appropriate values of the probability of re-election and the discount factor cooperation in maintaining the value of a state variable is possible, but fragile. Another result is that, in such political framework, debt decisions contain an externality element linked to electoral incentives that creates a bias towards excessive borrowing.

On optimal learning schedules and the marginal value of cumulative cultural evolution.

The age-dependent choice between expressing individual learning (IL) or social learning (SL) affects cumulative cultural evolution. A learning schedule in which SL precedes IL is supportive of cumulative culture because the amount of nongenetically encoded adaptive information acquired by previous generations can be absorbed by an individual and augmented. Devoting time and energy to learning, however, reduces the resources available for other life-history components. Learning schedules and life history thus coevolve. Here, we analyze a model where individuals may have up to three distinct life stages: "infants" using IL or oblique SL, "juveniles" implementing IL or horizontal SL, and adults obtaining material resources with learned information. We study the dynamic allocation of IL and SL within life stages and how this coevolves with the length of the learning stages. Although no learning may be evolutionary stable, we find conditions where cumulative cultural evolution can be selected for. In that case, the evolutionary stable learning schedule causes individuals to use oblique SL during infancy and a mixture between IL and horizontal SL when juvenile. We also find that the selected pattern of oblique SL increases the amount of information in the population, but horizontal SL does not do so.

Resource management research in Passive Optical Networks (PON)

Next Generation Access Networks (NGAN) are the new step forward to deliver broadband services and to facilitate the integration of different technologies. It is plausible to assume that, from a technological standpoint, the Future Internet will be composed of long-range high-speed optical networks; a number of wireless networks at the edge; and, in between, several access technologies, among which, the Passive Optical Networks (xPON) are very likely to succeed, due to their simplicity, low-cost, and increased bandwidth. Among the different PON technologies, the Ethernet-PON (EPON) is the most promising alternative to satisfy operator and user needs, due to its cost, flexibility and interoperability with other technologies. One of the most interesting challenges in such technologies relates to the scheduling and allocation of resources in the upstream (shared) channel. The aim of this research project is to study and evaluate current contributions and propose new efficient solutions to address the resource allocation issues in Next Generation EPON (NG-EPON). Key issues in this context are future end-user needs, integrated quality of service (QoS) support and optimized service provisioning for real time and elastic flows. This project will unveil research opportunities, issue recommendations and propose novel mechanisms associated with the convergence within heterogeneous access networks and will thus serve as a basis for long-term research projects in this direction. The project has served as a platform for the generation of new concepts and solutions that were published in national and international conferences, scientific journals and also in book chapter. We expect some more research publications in addition to the ones mentioned to be generated in a few months.

The Swiss Willensnation at Risk: Teachers in the Cultural Gap during the First World War

As a neutral and multilingual country, Switzerland struggled with major domestic political conflicts during the First World War due to the two cultures of the French-speaking and German-speaking parts of the country. The divided cultural loyalties ('fossé moral', 'Röstigraben'), consisting of Swiss-Germans supporting Germany and Swiss-French supporting France, were discussed intensively in both of the main teachers' journals in Switzerland. Teachers felt the need to react and to promote unity from the beginning of the war. Despite the fact that the cantons are responsible for public education and, therefore, for the education of their students, teachers considered themselves called to educate their students to be national citizens rather than to be members of a language group. This threefold citizenship - communal, cantonal and national - was not scrutinised, but national unity became crucial due to the critical political circumstances. How did teachers promote and constitute citizenship for themselves and for their students in a nation united by free will during the First World War, a time of severe internal political conflicts?

A simulation-based algorithm for solving the resource-assignment problem in satellite telecommunication networks

This paper proposes an heuristic for the scheduling of capacity requests and the periodic assignment of radio resources in geostationary (GEO) satellite networks with star topology, using the Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) protocol in the link layer, and Multi-Frequency Time Division Multiple Access (MF-TDMA) and Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) in the physical layer.

ERPN Enterprise Resource Planning Newsletter, February 2001, Vol.1, no.1

Newsletter for Information Technology Department