The deployment of an e-book consultation and loan service : the experience of the Open University of Catalonia Library

La Biblioteca de la UOC (UOC Library) ha ofert durant tres mesos (octubre-desembre 09), en fase de prova pilot, un servei de consulta i préstec de lectors de llibres electrònics (e-readers). Aquest nou desplegament s'ha desenvolupat en consonància amb l'aposta general de la Universitat en innovació en tecnologies aplicades a l'educació, i la voluntat de potenciar les col·leccions de llibres electrònics i l'ús dels dispositius de lectura de llibres electrònics com una extensió més de la tecnologia del Campus 5.0, en el suport a l'aprenentatge dels seus estudiants durant la seva formació a la Universitat. Aquest treball presenta en detall les especificacions de la prova pilot, a més de contenir una anàlisi i avaluació dels resultats obtinguts: punts forts i punts febles, relació dels aspectes a millorar i modificar, de cara a la consolidació final del servei.

Effectiveness and safety of isoniazid chemoprophylaxis for HIV-1 infected patients from Rio de Janeiro

The clinical and epidemiological characteristics, adverse events, treatment adherence and effectiveness of isoniazid chemoprophylaxis were analyzed in a cohort of 138 tuberculosis/HIV-coinfected patients. An open, non-randomized, pragmatic prophylactic trial was conducted on adult patients with a normal chest X-ray and positive tuberculin skin test (> 5 mm) who received isoniazid chemoprophylaxis (300 mg/day) for six months. The mean of follow up was 2.8 years (SD 1.3). Adherence to chemoprophylaxis was 87.7% (121/138). Only one patient presented tuberculosis after the end of chemoprophylaxis, corresponding to 0.3 cases per 100 persons per year. The relative risk of some adverse effects was 4.6 times higher (95% CI: 1.9-11.5) in patients with positive anti-HCV serology (4/9, 44.4%) compared to those with negative serology (12/129, 9.6%) (p = 0.002). This study provides evidence regarding the effectiveness and safety of a short and self-administered isoniazid regimen. We recommend the implementation of this routine by health service practitioners.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy in newly diagnosed cancer patients: a randomized controlled trial

Aims: (i) To describe the prevalence and profile of newly diagnosed cancer patients motivated for psychotherapy and (ii) To evaluate its effectiveness.Methods: Between 2006 and 2009, every new patient of the Oncology Service of the University Hospital Lausanne was informed of the opportunity to benefit from psychotherapeutic support. Patients were randomly assigned to an immediate or delayed (4 month waiting list) psychodynamicoriented psychotherapeutic intervention, formalized as short intervention (1-4 sessions) or brief psychotherapy (16 sessions). Patients with no interest were asked to participate in an observational group. Socio-demographic and medical data, anxiety and depression (HADS, SCL-90), alexithymia (TAS) and quality of life were evaluated for all groups at baseline and 1, 4, 8 and 12-months follow-up. Results: Of 1973 patients approached, 1024 were excluded, mainly because of organisational reasons (living too far away, interfering treatments, etc.), ageN75 years, life expectancyb1 year or language difficulties. One fourth (N=530) refused to participate and 229 patients accepted to be followed in the observational group. Patients interested in psychological support (N=190, 94 in immediate and 96 in delayed intervention) were younger, predominantly female and symptomatic (higher depression and anxiety scores); 56% engaged in 1-4 and 44% in 16 sessions.Conclusions: The naturalistic design of this study revealed relevant questions regarding (i) the design of such studies (untargeted intervention, choice of measurement, etc.), (ii) the type of interventions (pro-active approaches of men, those unable to speak the language or who can not leave home) and (iii) the profile of patients accepting support. A complete analysis will be presented at the congress.Keywords: Psychotherapy, psycho-oncology, cancer, methodology, interventions

Time-series regression models to study the short-term effects of environmental factors on health

Time series regression models are especially suitable in epidemiology for evaluating short-term effects of time-varying exposures on health. The problem is that potential for confounding in time series regression is very high. Thus, it is important that trend and seasonality are properly accounted for. Our paper reviews the statistical models commonly used in time-series regression methods, specially allowing for serial correlation, make them potentially useful for selected epidemiological purposes. In particular, we discuss the use of time-series regression for counts using a wide range Generalised Linear Models as well as Generalised Additive Models. In addition, recently critical points in using statistical software for GAM were stressed, and reanalyses of time series data on air pollution and health were performed in order to update already published. Applications are offered through an example on the relationship between asthma emergency admissions and photochemical air pollutants

Diagnostic accuracy, effectiveness and cost for cognitive impairment and dementia screening of three short cognitive tests applicable to illiterates

BACKGROUND Illiteracy, a universal problem, limits the utilization of the most widely used short cognitive tests. Our objective was to assess and compare the effectiveness and cost for cognitive impairment (CI) and dementia (DEM) screening of three short cognitive tests applicable to illiterates. METHODS Phase III diagnostic test evaluation study was performed during one year in four Primary Care centers, prospectively including individuals with suspicion of CI or DEM. All underwent the Eurotest, Memory Alteration Test (M@T), and Phototest, applied in a balanced manner. Clinical, functional, and cognitive studies were independently performed in a blinded fashion in a Cognitive Behavioral Neurology Unit, and the gold standard diagnosis was established by consensus of expert neurologists on the basis of these results. Effectiveness of tests was assessed as the proportion of correct diagnoses (diagnostic accuracy [DA]) and the kappa index of concordance (k) with respect to gold standard diagnoses. Costs were based on public prices at the time and hospital accounts. RESULTS The study included 139 individuals: 47 with DEM, 36 with CI, and 56 without CI. No significant differences in effectiveness were found among the tests. For DEM screening: Eurotest (k = 0.71 [0.59-0.83], DA = 0.87 [0.80-0.92]), M@T (k = 0.72 [0.60-0.84], DA = 0.87 [0.80-0.92]), Phototest (k = 0.70 [0.57-0.82], DA = 0.86 [0.79-0.91]). For CI screening: Eurotest (k = 0.67 [0.55-0.79]; DA = 0.83 [0.76-0.89]), M@T (k = 0.52 [0.37-0.67]; DA = 0.80 [0.72-0.86]), Phototest (k = 0.59 [0.46-0.72]; DA = 0.79 [0.71-0.86]). There were no differences in the cost of DEM screening, but the cost of CI screening was significantly higher with M@T (330.7 ± 177.1 €, mean ± sd) than with Eurotest (294.1 ± 195.0 €) or Phototest (296.0 ± 196. 5 €). Application time was shorter with Phototest (2.8 ± 0.8 min) than with Eurotest (7.1 ± 1.8 min) or M@T (6.8 ± 2.2 min). CONCLUSIONS Eurotest, M@T, and Phototest are equally effective. Eurotest and Phototest are both less expensive options but Phototest is the most efficient, requiring the shortest application time.

Resource dimensioning aspect of heterogeneous traffic with different service requirements: Integration versus segregation

In this paper, we consider the ATM networks in which the virtual path concept is implemented. The question of how to multiplex two or more diverse traffic classes while providing different quality of service requirements is a very complicated open problem. Two distinct options are available: integration and segregation. In an integration approach all the traffic from different connections are multiplexed onto one VP. This implies that the most restrictive QOS requirements must be applied to all services. Therefore, link utilization will be decreased because unnecessarily stringent QOS is provided to all connections. With the segregation approach the problem can be much simplified if different types of traffic are separated by assigning a VP with dedicated resources (buffers and links). Therefore, resources may not be efficiently utilized because no sharing of bandwidth can take place across the VP. The probability that the bandwidth required by the accepted connections exceeds the capacity of the link is evaluated with the probability of congestion (PC). Since the PC can be expressed as the CLP, we shall simply carry out bandwidth allocation using the PC. We first focus on the influence of some parameters (CLP, bit rate and burstiness) on the capacity required by a VP supporting a single traffic class using the new convolution approach. Numerical results are presented both to compare the required capacity and to observe which conditions under each approach are preferred

Enhanced multi-layer protection in multi-service GMPLS networks

This paper focuses on QoS routing with protection in an MPLS network over an optical layer. In this multi-layer scenario each layer deploys its own fault management methods. A partially protected optical layer is proposed and the rest of the network is protected at the MPLS layer. New protection schemes that avoid protection duplications are proposed. Moreover, this paper also introduces a new traffic classification based on the level of reliability. The failure impact is evaluated in terms of recovery time depending on the traffic class. The proposed schemes also include a novel variation of minimum interference routing and shared segment backup computation. A complete set of experiments proves that the proposed schemes are more efficient as compared to the previous ones, in terms of resources used to protect the network, failure impact and the request rejection ratio

A quantitative genetic signature of senescence in a short-lived perennial plant.

The evolution of senescence (the physiological decline of organisms with age) poses an apparent paradox because it represents a failure of natural selection to increase the survival and reproductive performance of organisms. The paradox can be resolved if natural selection becomes less effective with age, because the death of postreproductive individuals should have diminished effects on Darwinian fitness [1, 2]. A substantial body of empirical work is consistent with this prediction for animals, which transmit their genes to progeny via an immortal germline. However, such evidence is still lacking in plants, which lack a germline and whose reproduction is diffuse and modular across the soma. Here, we provide experimental evidence for a genetic basis of senescence in the short-lived perennial plant Silene latifolia. Our pedigree-based analysis revealed a marked increase with age in the additive genetic variance of traits closely associated with fitness. This result thus extends to plants the quantitative genetic support for the evolutionary theory of senescence.