De la animación sociocultural al desarrollo comunitario: su incidencia en el ocio

Se presenta una investigación que evalúa un programa de ocio dirigido a personas mayores activas. Dicho programa utiliza como base de actuación la metodología de la Animación sociocultural desde la que se promueve un modelo de Desarrollo comunitario. El objetivo que orienta este estudio es verificar cómo la aplicación de esta metodología puede desarrollar procesos de participación ciudadana, incrementar la iniciativa social y promover la democracia cultural en los barrios, territorios y espacios comunitarios. El programa se complementa con una extensa revisión bibliográfica y entrevistas a diferentes profesionales del ámbito académico y profesional. A partir de las conclusiones de este trabajo, se aportan nuevas líneas de investigación que puedan contribuir a la mejora de la intervención social y de la acción comunitaria.

Serving Iowa Youth and Families with a Youth Development Approach : JJDP Act Formula Grant Application and Three-Year Comprehensive Plan

This report is Iowa’s Three-Year Plan, which serves as the application for federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act formula grant funding (JJDP Act). The Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning (CJJP) wrote Iowa’s Three-Year Plan. CJJP is the state agency responsible for administering the JJDP Act in Iowa. Federal officials refer to state administering agencies as the state planning agency (SPA). The Plan was developed and approved by Iowa’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Council. That Council assists with administration of the JJDP Act, and also provides guidance and direction to the SPA, the Governor and the legislature regarding juvenile justice issues in Iowa. Federal officials refer to such state level groups as state advisory groups (SAG’s). The acronyms SPA and SAG are used through this report.

Reverse immunology approach for the identification of CD8 T-cell-defined antigens: advantages and hurdles.

One of the challenges of tumour immunology remains the identification of strongly immunogenic tumour antigens for vaccination. Reverse immunology, that is, the procedure to predict and identify immunogenic peptides from the sequence of a gene product of interest, has been postulated to be a particularly efficient, high-throughput approach for tumour antigen discovery. Over one decade after this concept was born, we discuss the reverse immunology approach in terms of costs and efficacy: data mining with bioinformatic algorithms, molecular methods to identify tumour-specific transcripts, prediction and determination of proteasomal cleavage sites, peptide-binding prediction to HLA molecules and experimental validation, assessment of the in vitro and in vivo immunogenic potential of selected peptide antigens, isolation of specific cytolytic T lymphocyte clones and final validation in functional assays of tumour cell recognition. We conclude that the overall low sensitivity and yield of every prediction step often requires a compensatory up-scaling of the initial number of candidate sequences to be screened, rendering reverse immunology an unexpectedly complex approach.

Ab initio absorption spectrum of NiO combining molecular dynamics with the embedded cluster approach in a discrete reaction field

We developed a procedure that combines three complementary computational methodologies to improve the theoretical description of the electronic structure of nickel oxide. The starting point is a Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics simulation to incorporate vibrorotational degrees of freedom into the material model. By means ofcomplete active space self-consistent field second-order perturbation theory (CASPT2) calculations on embedded clusters extracted from the resulting trajectory, we describe localized spectroscopic phenomena on NiO with an efficient treatment of electron correlation. The inclusion of thermal motion into the theoretical description allowsus to study electronic transitions that, otherwise, would be dipole forbidden in the ideal structure and results in a natural reproduction of the band broadening. Moreover, we improved the embedded cluster model by incorporating self-consistently at the complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) level a discrete (or direct) reaction field (DRF) in the cluster surroundings. The DRF approach offers an efficient treatment ofelectric response effects of the crystalline embedding to the electronic transitions localized in the cluster. We offer accurate theoretical estimates of the absorption spectrum and the density of states around the Fermi level of NiO, and a comprehensive explanation of the source of the broadening and the relaxation of the charge transferstates due to the adaptation of the environment

An integrated approach for the assessment of HAB dynamics in two NW Mediterranean bays from a GEOHAB perspective

Alfacs and Fangar Bay in the Ebro Delta, NW Mediterranean are the major sites in Catalonia for shellfish cultivation. These bays are subject to occasional closures in shellfish harvesting due to the presence of phycotoxins. Fish kills have also been associated with harmful algal blooms. The comparison of phytoplankton dynamics in both bays offers the opportunity to reveal differences in bloom patterns of species known to be harmful for the ecosystem and aquaculture activities. Field research is underway under the GEOHAB framework within the Core Research Project on HABs in Fjords and Coastal Embayments. The overall objective of this study is to improve our understanding of HAB biogeographical patterns, and key elements driving bloom dynamics in time and space within these semi-constrained embayments. Via the comparative approach we aim to improve the prediction for monitoring purposes, with a focus on Karlodinium spp. associated with massive kills of aquaculture species. This objective is addressed by incorporating long-term time series of phytoplankton identification and enumeration with the first results of recent field work in both bays. The latter includes the application of optical sensors, to yield a complementary view with enhanced spatial and temporal resolution of bloom phenomena.

Médecine de l'adolescence. La Guglera: une réponse nouvelle et originale aux adolescents gravement obèses et sans travail [Adolescent medicine in Guglera: a novel approach for unemployed, severely obese adolescents]

The Center "la Guglera", located in the canton of Fribourg (Switzerland) provides a novel approach to the care of severely obese adolescents who are currently unemployed. These young people, whose BMI is usually higher than 35 to 40 kg/m2 spend a 6 to 12 months long stay in an in-patient institution which also takes care of other unemployed non obese adolescents on an outpatient basis. Besides a nutritional education which is part of the everyday life of the institution, the program includes a generous amount of hours of physical activities and sports. The adolescents also participate in a rehabilitation training program which fosters the future integration in a professional milieu, such as an apprenticeship. The short term results of la Guglera seem very promising. The program is financially co-supported by the Swiss and cantonal administrations, the insurance companies and the parents.

Identification concept and the use of probabilities in forensic odontology--an approach by philosophical discussion.

This paper questions the practitioners' deterministic approach(es) in forensic identification and notes the limits of their conclusions in order to encourage a discussion to question current practices. With this end in view, a hypothetical discussion between an expert in dentistry and an enthusiastic member of a jury, eager to understand the scientific principles of evidence interpretation, is presented. This discussion will lead us to regard any argument aiming at identification as probabilistic.

Managing diabetes in Switzerland : a systemic approach

Executive summaryThe increasing prevalence of chronic diseases is one of the major causes of rising health expenditure, as stated by the WHO. Not only chronic diseases are very costly, but they are by far the leading cause of mortality in the world, representing 60% of all deaths. Diabetes in particular is becoming a major burden of disease. In Switzerland around 5% of the population suffer of type 2 diabetes and 5 to 10% of the annual health care budget is attributable to diabetes. If the predictions of WHO do realise, the prevalence of diabetes will double until 2030 and so is expected the attributable health expenditure.The objective of this thesis is to provide policy recommendations as to slow down the disease progression and its costly complication. We study the factors that influence diabetes dynamics and the interventions that improve health outcomes while decreasing costs according to different time horizon and use systems thinking and system dynamic.Our results show that managing diabetes requires using integrated care interventions that are effective on three fronts: (1) delaying the onset of complications, (2) slowing down the disease progression and (3) accelerating the time to diagnosis of diabetes and its complications. We recommend firstly the implementation of those interventions targeted at changing patients' behaviour which are also less expensive, but require a change in the delivery of care and medical practices. Then policies targeted at an earlier diagnosis of diabetes, its prevention and the diagnosis of complications are to be considered. This sequence of interventions allows saving money, as total costs decrease, even including the costs of interventions and result in longer life expectancy of diabetics in the long term.In diabetes management there is therefore a trade-off between medical costs and patients' benefits on the one hand and between the objectives of obtaining results in the short or long term on the other hand. Decision makers need to deliver acceptable outcomes in the short term. Considering this criterion, the preferred policy may be to focus only on diagnosed diabetics, thus attempting to slow down the progression of their disease, compared to an integrated care approach addressing all the aspects of the disease. Such a policy also yields desirable results in terms of costs and patients' benefits.

Approche multidisciptinaire des coûts humains des lombalgies [Human cost of low back pain: a multi-disciplinary approach]

The valuation of human costs is a necessity, but this task poses many problems of method. A team made of a philosopher, a psychologist and a physician has been working with economist researchers in order to look into the meaning that the preferences announced at the time of the inquiries on human costs by QALY methods could assume. These methods are often used to obtain a valuation of the impact of a health attack on people's quality of life. The methods--in the frame of the argument assumed by the economic theory on well-being--hypothesize that people's choices depend mainly on cognitive work. The qualitative interviews show that the psychological construction process for the announced preferences largely overlap this frame. In this paper the authors hastily tackle the factors which have an effect on the preferences. They conclude that the QALY methods don't seem to be able to assess the quality of life nori to valuate the damage that the quality of life could include.

An Interval Intelligent-based Approach for Fault Detection and Modelling

Not considered in the analytical model of the plant, uncertainties always dramatically decrease the performance of the fault detection task in the practice. To cope better with this prevalent problem, in this paper we develop a methodology using Modal Interval Analysis which takes into account those uncertainties in the plant model. A fault detection method is developed based on this model which is quite robust to uncertainty and results in no false alarm. As soon as a fault is detected, an ANFIS model is trained in online to capture the major behavior of the occurred fault which can be used for fault accommodation. The simulation results understandably demonstrate the capability of the proposed method for accomplishing both tasks appropriately

Object and Scene Classification: what does a Supervised Approach Provide us?

Given a set of images of scenes containing different object categories (e.g. grass, roads) our objective is to discover these objects in each image, and to use this object occurrences to perform a scene classification (e.g. beach scene, mountain scene). We achieve this by using a supervised learning algorithm able to learn with few images to facilitate the user task. We use a probabilistic model to recognise the objects and further we classify the scene based on their object occurrences. Experimental results are shown and evaluated to prove the validity of our proposal. Object recognition performance is compared to the approaches of He et al. (2004) and Marti et al. (2001) using their own datasets. Furthermore an unsupervised method is implemented in order to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of our supervised classification approach versus an unsupervised one

A hierarchical approach to model parameter optimization for developmental systems.

In the context of Systems Biology, computer simulations of gene regulatory networks provide a powerful tool to validate hypotheses and to explore possible system behaviors. Nevertheless, modeling a system poses some challenges of its own: especially the step of model calibration is often difficult due to insufficient data. For example when considering developmental systems, mostly qualitative data describing the developmental trajectory is available while common calibration techniques rely on high-resolution quantitative data. Focusing on the calibration of differential equation models for developmental systems, this study investigates different approaches to utilize the available data to overcome these difficulties. More specifically, the fact that developmental processes are hierarchically organized is exploited to increase convergence rates of the calibration process as well as to save computation time. Using a gene regulatory network model for stem cell homeostasis in Arabidopsis thaliana the performance of the different investigated approaches is evaluated, documenting considerable gains provided by the proposed hierarchical approach.