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Background: We report the long-term outcomes, changes in laboratory parameters, the incidence of secondary nosocomial infections and treatment cost of a Spanish cohort of patients with severe COVID-19 that received tocilizumab (TCZ). Methods: Retrospective cohort of PCR confirmed adult patients who received TCZ from March 1 to 24, 2020 in a tertiary hospital was analyzed. Patients were followed up until 10 May 2020. Results: We included 162 patients (median age 64 years; 70.4% male). At time of TCZ administration, 48.1% of patients were on invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV). Over a median follow-up of 53 days, 46.9% of patients were discharge in good conditions and 19.8% were still hospitalized. The overall mortality was 33.3%, being higher in patients on IMV than those who did not (46.2% vs 26.7%, P < 0.001). A significant improvement in the lymphocyte count, C-reactive protein, lactate dehydrogenase, and D-dimer was observed. Overall, 43.2% patients presented nosocomial infections, causing death in 8%. Infections were more prevalent in ICU units (63.0% vs 17.1%, P < 0.001). The total cost of TCZ was €371,784. Conclusions: Among the patients who used TCZ, one third died, regardless the improvement in some inflammatory biomarkers. The incidence of secondary nosocomial infections was high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A software tool is designed to analyze student performance along a given curriculum. This computer-based program simulates future student academic performance, considering the specific university regulations and historical data about passing/failing statistics. The proposed method is based on well-known stochastic programming methods (Monte Carlo). The proposed tool allows to compute the academic performance rates for the specific subjects of the curriculum for each semester, as well as the overall rates (the set of subjects in the semester), which are the efficiency rate and the success rate. Additionally, we compute the rates for the Bachelor's degree, which are the graduation rate measured as the percentage of students who finish as scheduled or taking an extra year and the efficiency rate (measured as the percentage of credits of the curriculum with respect to the credits really taken). Moreover, the sensitivity of the performance metrics to some of the parameters of the simulator is analyzed using robust statistical tools. As a representative case study, the simulator has been adapted to the curriculum characteristics of the Bachelor in Engineering Technologies at the Technical University of Madrid, Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity price forecasting has become the focus of considerable interest in a deregulated energy market. In this study, regression tree‐based models: classification and regression trees, Bagging and Random Forests have been built and used to identify the variables dominating the marginal price of the commodity as well as for short‐term (one hour and day ahead) electricity price forecasting for the Spanish–Iberian market. Different prediction models are proposed including the main features of the market such as load, hydro and thermal generation and from available, wind energy production, of strategic interest in the Spanish market. In addition other explanatory variables are considered as lagged prices, as well as hour, day, month and year indicators. In the study, hourly data from 2000–2011 corresponding to 22 variables have been used. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed ensemble of tree‐based models which emerge as an alternative and promising tool, competitive with other existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributing to the acquisition of professional creativity and teamwork skills has been a special challenge for some of the subjects taught at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), and this has been a starting point for the work described in this paper. Some professors have intuited that the use of cooperative classrooms could facilitate the acquisition of these skills. We describe the new methodologies applied within cooperative classrooms by some professors, and present the procedure for measuring students' perception of their own learning outcomes, skill improvements, and overall satisfaction with the use of this kind of classroom. For this project, 250 students enrolled in several subjects answered a questionnaire. The features of the subjects involved in the project are widely disparate. We present the results of the statistical analysis with special emphasis on creativity and teamwork skills, and we conclude that the use of cooperative classroom has a positive influence on the acquisition of these skills. This work has the added value of being the first analysis of student perception of the use of cooperative classroom in the acquisition of creativity and teamwork skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - To analyse the influence of three different types of organisational support (supervisor's and colleagues' support, training, and acknowledgement and rewards) on the implementation of teamwork systems. Design/methodology/approach - Main and buffer effects of social support were tested using different subjective (job satisfaction and job involvement) and objective (production and total production management (1PM)) organisational criteria. In the longitudinal study, two sets of data were taken from a sample of workers from car-manufacturing factories in two consecutive years. Findings - The three dimensions of support explain 30 per cent of the variance in job satisfaction in time 1(n) and ii per cent in time 2 (T2). A total of 50 per cent of job involvement in Ti is due to the supervisor's and colleagues' support, whereas in T2 this influence is not apparent Social support from supervisor's and colleagues and acknowledgment and rewards explain 10 per cent of the variance of the objective measures (production and TPM). Research limitations/implications - The objective measures used are similar for the production line as a whole and therefore they do not consider the possible differences in performance between different production line groups. Practical implications - The importance of social support in organisational settings, in particular in the implementation of working teams. It also emphasises the need to distinguish the different stages of support from colleagues, supervisors or the organisation. Originality/value - This study indicates that support is an easy and inexpensive means not only to improve the social environment of an employee but also to make an important contribution towards productivity targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work describes a procedure that determines the optimal allocation for the yearly energy resulting from random water inflows to the different subperiods of a year so that the expected benefits are maximized. Its main idea is to distribute the energy stored in reservoirs in each period into two parts: one is directly sold in the energy market, while the other is made avail- able to cover any unplanned outages of thermal units. The method proposed fulfills two objectives, to distribute the hydro energy optimally according to economic criteria and to assess the impact of new market rules on the reliability of an electric system. The procedure will be illustrated by an example based on the Spanish generating system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purposes of this paper are to derive Bayesian acceptance sampling plans regarding the number of defects per unit of product, and to illustrate how to apply the methodology to the paper pulp industry. The sampling plans are obtained following an economic criterion: minimize the expected total cost of quality. It has been assumed that the number of defects per unit of product follows a Poisson distribution with process average λ, whose prior information is described either for a gamma or for a non- informative distribution. The expected total cost of quality is composed of three independent components: inspection, acceptance and rejection. Both quadratic and step-loss functions have been used to quantify the cost incurred for the acceptance of a lot containing units with defects. Combining the prior information on λ with the loss functions, four different sampling plans are obtained. When the quadratic-loss function is used, an analytical relation between the optimum settings of the sample size and the acceptance number is derived. The robustness analysis indicates that the sampling plans obtained are robust with respect to the prior distribution of the process average as well as to the misspecification of its mean and variance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The WHO declared the SARS- CoV-2 outbreak a pandemic in March 11, 2020.  Spain has been the third country with the highest number of reported cases of  COVID-19. In the face of the pandemic, the authorities of the Autonomous  Community of Madrid led an unprecedented transformation of hospital services  by increasing the number of beds available, setting up temporary field hospitals  in fairgrounds, and transforming hotels into support centers for patients with  mild symptoms of COVID-19. In the light that this crisis will continue to be a real threat for the years to come, our hospital pharmacies need to be better prepared for similar outbreaks in the future. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the  Department of Hospital Pharmacy of Hospital General Universitario Gregorio  Marañón has faced four challenges: an exponential increase in the demand for  resources, constant changes to therapeutic protocols and approaches, regulatory changes, and a dramatic impact on hospital staff (strain on human resources  and psychological impact). This article is aimed at describing the main  organizational changes implemented to the Department of Hospital Pharmacy of  Hospital GU Gregorio Marañón and its relationship with other hospital  pharmacies of the Community of Madrid. An account is provided of the strategies to be adopted for reorganizing a Department of Hospital Pharmacy and achieve a safe and effective use of medications. Strategies range from the creation of  integral hospital task groups (COVID-crisis task group, protocolization task  group, research task group) to the adaptation of the internal organization of the  Department of Hospital Pharmacy, which encompasses aspects related to  management and leadership; a communication plan (internal and external);  staff management, and the reorganization and adaptation of processes. People,  patients and professionals are at the core of these strategies. This paper is a  reflection on key factors of "humanization in COVID times"., (Copyright AULA MEDICA EDICIONES 2014. Published by AULA MEDICA. All rights reserved.)

Excessive ethanol consumption affects virtually any organ, both by indirect and direct mechanisms. Considerable research in the last two decades has widened the knowledge about the paramount importance of proinflammatory cytokines and oxidative damage in the pathogenesis of many of the systemic manifestations of alcoholism. These cytokines derive primarily from activated Kupffer cells exposed to Gram-negative intestinal bacteria, which reach the liver in supra-physiological amounts due to ethanol-mediated increased gut permeability. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) that enhance the inflammatory response are generated both by activation of Kupffer cells and by the direct metabolic effects of ethanol. The effects of this increased cytokine secretion and ROS generation lie far beyond liver damage. In addition to the classic consequences of endotoxemia associated with liver cirrhosis that were described several decades ago, important research in the last ten years has shown that cytokines may also induce damage in remote organs such as brain, bone, muscle, heart, lung, gonads, peripheral nerve, and pancreas. These effects are even seen in alcoholics without significant liver disease. Therefore, alcoholism can be viewed as an inflammatory condition, a concept which opens the possibility of using new therapeutic weapons to treat some of the complications of this devastating and frequent disease. In this review we examine some of the most outstanding consequences of the altered cytokine regulation that occurs in alcoholics in organs other than the liver.