Intermittent hypoxia exposure in a hypobaric chamber and erythropoietin abuse interpretation

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of intermittent hypoxia exposure on direct and indirect methods used to evaluate recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) misuse. Sixteen male triathletes were randomly assigned to either the intermittent hypoxia exposure group (experimental group) or the control normoxic group (control group). The members of the experimental group were exposed to simulated altitude (from 4000 to 5500 m) in a hypobaric chamber for 3 h per day, 5 days a week, for 4 weeks. Blood and urine samples were collected before and after the first and the final exposures, and again 2 weeks after the final exposure. While serum EPO significantly increased after the first [from a mean 8.3 IU · l^?1 (s = 3.2) to 16.6 IU · l^?1 (s = 4.7)] and final exposures [from 4.6 IU · l^?1 (s = 1.4) to 24.8 IU · l^?1 (s = 9.3)], haemoglobin, percentage of reticulocytes, and soluble transferrin receptor were not elevated. Second-generation ON/OFF models (indirect rhEPO misuse detection) were insensitive to intermittent hypoxia exposure. The distribution of the urinary EPO isoelectric profiles (direct rhEPO misuse detection) was altered after intermittent hypoxia exposure with a slight shift towards more basic isoforms. However, those shifts never resulted in misinterpretation of results. The intermittent hypoxia exposure protocol studied did not produce any false-positive result for indirect or direct detection of rhEPO misuse in spite of the changes in EPO serum concentrations and urinary EPO isoelectric profiles, respectively.     

Valoración diagnóstica de la Batería Piaget-Head (Primera parte)

RESUMEN

Se presenta una discusión crítica sobre el uso de la batería de Piaget-Head para la valoración diagnóstica de dificultades en el aprendizaje. Esta batería fue elaborada por Galifret-Granjon a partir de la selección de pruebas provenientes de Piaget y Head. El estudio encuentra errores en la elaboración de la batería. Los objetivos de las pruebas de Piaget discrepan de los objetivos originales del autor y las pruebas procedentes de Head se escogen según un criterio inadecuado. Los errores que se puedan cometer en la batería parecen más bien debidos a la forma operativa (adecuada o inadecuada) con que el sujeto elabora, que a una alteración del esquema corporal, de la orientación espacial, o de la estructuración del lenguaje.     

Reflexiones sobre el lenguaje autista. I.—Análisis descrpitivos y diferencias con la disfasia receptiva

Resumen

En este articulo, se revisan las descripciones clínicas y los estudios sistemáticos que tratan de establecer los rasgos que definen al lenguaje de los autistas cuando se les compara con el dé los sujetos normales o con otras clases de alteraciones. En la última parte de él, se analizan especialmente las semejanzas y diferencias entre el lenguaje autista y el de los niños con disfasia receptiva del desarrollo y anlizaremos la llamada «tesis de continuidad», que concibe el autismo como una especie de disfasia receptiva grave. En un trabajo posterior, se analizarán más específicamente algunas de las alteraciones más características del lenguaje de los autistas (p.e. ecolalia, inversión pronominal, problemas de comprensión) y se discutirán sus anomalías y retrasos en relación con los distintos componentes (fonológico, morfosintáctico, léxico, etc.) en que puede analizarse el lenguaje.     

Clase social y situación dentro de la fratria: Interacción y efectos sobre el desarrollo del individuo

Resumen

En este estudio se analiza la influencia de la clase social, el número de hermanos y el orden de nacimiento sobre una serie de variables cognitivas y de rendimiento escolar.

Se ha realizado la investigación sobre una muestra de 507 alumnos de 1° de E.G.B., pertenecientes a los Centros Públicos de Valladolid y provincia. Las variables de rendimiento escolar se evaluaron a través de la opinión del profesor. La valoración, en cambio, de las cognitivas se realizó por medio de pruebas estandarizadas. Dentro de los efectos principales, y dejando aparte las diferencias marcadas por el medio social, obviamente esperadas, destacamos una fuerte influencia del orden de nacimiento sobre prácticamente todas las variables dependientes. Su interacción con la variable socio cultural es el resultado más destacable del presente trabajo. Dedujimos como hipótesis explicativa las diferentes pautas culturales que propician o no la estabilidad de los patrones educativos familiares.     

A computer-supported learning system to help teachers to teach Fuzzy Information Retrieval Systems

This paper describes a computer-supported learning system to teach students the principles and concepts of Fuzzy Information Retrieval Systems based on weighted queries. This tool is used to support the teacher’s activity in the degree course Information Retrieval Systems Based on Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Library and Information Sciences at the University of Granada. Learning of languages of weighted queries in Fuzzy Information Retrieval Systems is complex because it is very difficult to understand the different semantics that could be associated to the weights of queries together with their respective strategies of query evaluation. We have developed and implemented this computer-supported education system because it allows to support the teacher’s activity in the classroom to teach the use of weighted queries in FIRSs and it helps students to develop self-learning processes on the use of such queries. We have evaluated the performance of its use in the learning process according to the students’ perceptions and their results obtained in the course’s exams. We have observed that using this software tool the students learn better the management of the weighted query languages and then their performance in the exams is improved.

大学治理:责任与财政

大学的演变主要体现在大学的结构、治理、管理系统、拨款机制方面以及知识、形式与内容的多样化。大学在公众参与和权威主义方面已经从一个极端走向了另一个极端。大学的未来取决于社会的引导和内部的共生。高等教育已经从以学习者为中心转向以教学和管理人员的共生结构为中心,高等教育经费需要多样化的渠道。大学的持续变革对于学校内部机制的公平、效力、效率、相关性,以及学生、教授、研究者和管理者等大学成员的道德规范提出了要求。     

Using ePortfolios to Assess Student Achievement within an Online Library and Information Studies Program

As a result of suggestions from the American Library Association (ALA) the Division of Library and Information Science (DLIS) program at St. John's University implemented an end-of-program electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) requirement. The purpose of this ePortfolio is to provide information on student proficiency in the eight ALA core competencies to our external accrediting agency—the ALA Committee on Accreditation (CoA). This article will discuss how a Library and Information Studies (LIS) faculty member and a New Media and Communications Specialist worked together in developing the ePortfolio as an assessment tool for ALA reaccreditation within an online LIS program.     

Research assessment by percentile-based double rank analysis

In the double rank analysis of research publications, the local rank position of a country or institution publication is expressed as a function of the world rank position. Excluding some highly or lowly cited publications, the double rank plot fits well with a power law, which can be explained because citations for local and world publications follow lognormal distributions. We report here that the distribution of the number of country or institution publications in world percentiles is a double rank distribution that can be fitted to a power law. Only the data points in high percentiles deviate from it when the local and world μ parameters of the lognormal distributions are very different. The likelihood of publishing very highly cited papers can be calculated from the power law that can be fitted either to the upper tail of the citation distribution or to the percentile-based double rank distribution. The great advantage of the latter method is that it has universal application, because it is based on all publications and not just on highly cited publications. Furthermore, this method extends the application of the well-established percentile approach to very low percentiles where breakthroughs are reported but paper counts cannot be performed.     

Extraction of complex index terms in non-English IR: A shallow parsing based approach

The performance of information retrieval systems is limited by the linguistic variation present in natural language texts. Word-level natural language processing techniques have been shown to be useful in reducing this variation. In this article, we summarize our work on the extension of these techniques for dealing with phrase-level variation in European languages, taking Spanish as a case in point. We propose the use of syntactic dependencies as complex index terms in an attempt to solve the problems deriving from both syntactic and morpho-syntactic variation and, in this way, to obtain more precise index terms. Such dependencies are obtained through a shallow parser based on cascades of finite-state transducers in order to reduce as far as possible the overhead due to this parsing process. The use of different sources of syntactic information, queries or documents, has been also studied, as has the restriction of the dependencies applied to those obtained from noun phrases. Our approaches have been tested using the CLEF corpus, obtaining consistent improvements with regard to classical word-level non-linguistic techniques. Results show, on the one hand, that syntactic information extracted from documents is more useful than that from queries. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that by restricting dependencies to those corresponding to noun phrases, important reductions of storage and management costs can be achieved, albeit at the expense of a slight reduction in performance.