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Since the proclamation of the Caliphate in 2014, an unprecedented number of women have fled to Syria to join the Islamic State (IS). This fact, a matter of national security for many countries, has spotlighted the two major official propaganda magazines of the organisation, Dabiq and Rumiyah, since both publications are considered potential recruitment tools. This paper studies the sections addressed to women in the aforementioned magazines to find out: (a) the roles of women within IS as depicted by the two official propaganda channels and (b) the legitimation strategies used by the organisation to justify their claims. To reach these aims, I will study the data considering the legitimation models proposed by van Leeuwen (2008) and Reyes (2011). The analysis will unveil the ideal type of woman any Muslim female joining the armed group should aspire to become.

Immunoparesis is the suppression of normal polyclonal immunoglobulins and is present in most patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (MM). The association of immunoparesis at diagnosis, and particularly its recovery along with treatment, with survival in patients ineligible for autologous stem-cell transplantation (ASCT) has not been well established. This retrospective study evaluated the impact of immunoparesis in 431 patients diagnosed with MM, ineligible for ASCT, with a median overall survival of 36 months [95% confidence interval (CI): 31-40]. Immunoparesis was present in 81.2% of patients at diagnosis and was associated with a trend to a worse overall response rate (ORR: 84.8% vs. 74.9%; OR 1.88 (95% CI: 0.97-3.63), shorter progression-free survival (PFS) [22.0 vs. 18.2 months; hazard ratio (HR) 0.775; 95%CI: 0.590-1.018; p = 0.066], and overall survival (OS) (45.9 vs. 34.2 months; HR 0.746; 95% CI: 0.551-1.010; p = 0.057). Twenty-four per cent of patients who had immunoparesis at diagnosis recovered polyclonal immunoglobulins in the follow-up period. Interestingly, these patients had a better ORR (96.3% vs. 68.2%; OR 12.29 (95% CI: 3.77-40.06), PFS (HR 0.703; 95CI%: 0.526-0.941; p = 0.018) and OS (HR 0.678; 95 CI%: 0.503-0.913; p = 0.011) than patients who did not recover it. In summary, restoring a healthy immune system along with first-line treatment in patients with MM, not receiving ASCT, is associated with better outcomes.

The homogeneity problem for testing if more than two different samples come from the same population is considered for the case of functional data. The methodological results are motivated by the study of homogeneity of electronic devices fabricated by different materials and active layer thicknesses. In the case of normality distribution of the stochastic processes associated with each sample, this problem is known as Functional ANOVA problem and is reduced to test the equality of the mean group functions (FANOVA). The problem is that the current/voltage curves associated with Resistive Random Access Memories (RRAM) are not generated by a Gaussian process so that a different approach is necessary for testing homogeneity. To solve this problem two different parametric and nonparametric approaches based on basis expansion of the sample curves are proposed. The first consists of testing multivariate homogeneity tests on a vector of basis coefficients of the sample curves. The second is based on dimension reduction by using functional principal component analysis of the sample curves (FPCA) and testing multivariate homogeneity on a vector of principal components scores. Different approximation numerical techniques are employed to adapt the experimental data for the statistical study. An extensive simulation study is developed for analyzing the performance of both approaches in the parametric and non-parametric cases. Finally, the proposed methodologies are applied on three samples of experimental reset curves measured in three different RRAM technologies.

[EN] This paper studies the introduction of sparse group LASSO (SGL) to the quantile regression framework. Additionally, a more flexible version, an adaptive SGL is proposed based on the adaptive idea, this is, the usage of adaptive weights in the penalization. Adaptive estimators are usually focused on the study of the oracle property under asymptotic and double asymptotic frameworks. A key step on the demonstration of this property is to consider adaptive weights based on a initial root n-consistent estimator. In practice this implies the usage of a non penalized estimator that limits the adaptive solutions to low dimensional scenarios. In this work, several solutions, based on dimension reduction techniques PCA and PLS, are studied for the calculation of these weights in high dimensional frameworks. The benefits of this proposal are studied both in synthetic and real datasets., We appreciate the work of the referees that has contributed to substantially improve the scientific contributions of this work. In this research we have made use of Uranus, a supercomputer cluster located at University Carlos III of Madrid and funded jointly by EU-FEDER funds and by the Spanish Government via the National Projects No. UNC313-4E-2361, No. ENE2009-12213- C03-03, No. ENE2012-33219 and No. ENE2015-68265-P. This research was partially supported by research grants and Project ECO2015-66593-P from Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad, Project MTM2017-88708-P from Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, FEDER funds and Project IJCI-2017-34038 from Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades.

Since the Islamic State proclaimed the Caliphate in 2014, the terrorist organization has been prominent due to the high-quality and efficient distribution of its propaganda, especially in the main online social media platforms. Two of their most popular vehicles for indoctrination and recruitment, the e-magazines Dabiq and Rumiyah, perfectly embody the philosophy of an organization constructed upon a multi-semiotic polarized discourse in which the antagonism between enemies and heroes is stated in many different ways. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis and visual framing as our main theoretical frameworks, this chapter analyses the semiotic structure of the images of foes and allies in the aforementioned magazines to show their essential role within the propaganda machine of the Islamic State, designed to achieve two main interconnected goals: the legitimation of their actions and, through this, the adherence of new fighters to their cause.

espanolEste articulo plantea una propuesta educativa que reivindica la inclusion del graffiti1 como objeto de estudio de una asignatura de espanol para extranjeros. Ademas de su infravalorado potencial desde una perspectiva meramente linguistica (como texto escrito), el graffiti puede resultar, sobre todo, una magnifica herramienta pedagogica que promueva el pensamiento critico y la formacion de ciudadanos intelectualmente activos. La incorporacion del graffiti al curriculo academico se justifica por la existencia de un marco educativo que prima la transversalidad como eje central para superar la mera concepcion de la ensenanza como transmision de conocimientos, asi como alienta el desarrollo de alumnos capaces de aplicar los mismos para adquirir un compromiso social. EnglishThis paper puts forward an educational proposal that reclaims the role of graffiti as the object of study of the subject of Spanish for foreign students. Letting aside its underused didactic potential from a linguistic perspective (as a written text), the graffiti can also be considered as a wonderful pedagogical tool that promotes critical thinking and the training of intellectually active citizens. The inclusion of graffiti in the curriculum is backed up by an educational framework that gives priority to transversality as the backbone that allows the improvement of pedagogy as just the transmission of knowledge and fosters the development of students capable to apply them to become socially engaged.

Introduction: The present study evaluates CD30 expression by immunohistochemistry (IHQ) in 216 patients with de novo DLBCL.Methods: CD30 expression was assessed retrospectively in all cases by IHQ....

The discriminative power of International Prognostic Index (IPI) in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) decreased with the addition of rituximab to chemotherapy. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN)-IPI and the Grupo Español de Linfomas y Trasplante Autólogo de Médula Ósea (GELTAMO)-IPI were developed to improve the risk prediction for DLBCL patients. We aim to validate the NCCN-IPI and GELTAMO-IPI in a large and homogeneous cohort of 337 DLBCL patients treated with curative intent with R-CHOP/R-CHOP-like immunochemotherapy. The IPI stratifies patients in two independent risk groups and the estimated 5-year overall survival (OS) of the high-risk (HR) group was 43%. NCCN-IPI discriminated four risk groups and GELTAMO-IPI three risk groups of patients. The predicted 5-year OS of the HR group was 38% and 29%, respectively. NCCN-IPI and GELTAMO-IPI are more accurate prognostic indices than IPI in DBLCL patients treated with immunochemotherapy. GELTAMO-IPI demonstrated enhanced discrimination than NCCN-IPI for the higher-risk population.

Introduction Besides the main treatment for their disease, hospital patients receive multiple care measures which include venous lines (VL), urinary catheters (UC), dietary restrictions (DR), mandatory bed rest (BR), deep venous thrombosis prophylaxis (VTP), stress ulcer prophylaxis (SUP) and anticoagulation bridge therapy for atrial fibrillation (BAF). In many cases these practices are of low value. Methods We analysed patients admitted to Internal Medicine wards throughout 2018 (2714 inpatients). We used different methodologies to identify low-value clinical practices. Results BR or DR at admission were recommended in 37% (32–44) and 24% (19–30) of the patients respectively. In 81% (71–87) and 33% (21–45) of the cases this restriction was deemed unnecessary. Ninety-six percent (92–98) had VL and 25% (19–32) UC. VL were not used in 10% (6–12), UC had no indications for insertion in 21% (11–35) and for maintenance in 31% (12–46) patients. Fifty-seven percent (49–64) of the patients were administered VTP and 69% (62–76) were prescribed SUP. Twenty-two percent (15–31) of patients with VTP and 52% (43–60) with SUP had no indication. Chronic anticoagulation for AF was interrupted in 65% (53–75) with BAF was prescribed in 38% (25–52) of them. An intervention to reduce low-value care supporting clinical practices addressed only to the Internal Medicine Wards showed very poor results. Conclusion These results demonstrate that there is ample room for reduction of low-value care. Interventions to implement clinical guidelines at admissions should be addressed to cover the entire admission process, from the emergency room to the ward. Partial approaches are discouraged.

Resistive Random Access Memories (RRAMs) are being studied by the industry and academia because it is widely accepted that they are promising candidates for the next generation of high density nonvolatile memories. Taking into account the stochastic nature of mechanisms behind resistive switching, a new technique based on the use of functional data analysis has been developed to accurately model resistive memory device characteristics. Functional principal component analysis (FPCA) based on Karhunen–Loeve expansion is applied to obtain an orthogonal decomposition of the reset process in terms of uncorrelated scalar random variables. Then, the device current has been accurately described making use of just one variable presenting a modeling approach that can be very attractive from the circuit simulation viewpoint. The new method allows a comprehensive description of the stochastic variability of these devices by introducing a probability distribution that allows the simulation of the main parameter that is employed for the model implementation. A rigorous description of the mathematical theory behind the technique is given and its application for a broad set of experimental measurements is explained.

In high-dimensional supervised learning problems, sparsity constraints in the solution often lead to better performance and interpretability of the results. For problems in which covariates are gro...

This article belongs to the Special Issue Methodological and Applied Contributions on Stochastic Modelling and Forecasting This paper introduces stringing via Manifold Learning (ML-stringing), an alternative to the original stringing based on Unidimensional Scaling (UDS). Our proposal is framed within a wider class of methods that map high-dimensional observations to the infinite space of functions,allowing the use of Functional Data Analysis (FDA). Stringing handles general high-dimensional data as scrambled realizations of an unknown stochastic process. Therefore, the essential feature of the method is a rearrangement of the observed values. Motivated by the linear nature of UDS and the increasing number of applications to biosciences (e.g., functional modeling of gene expression arrays and single nucleotide polymorphisms, or the classification of neuroimages) we aim to recover more complex relations between predictors through ML. In simulation studies, it is shown that MLstringing achieves higher-quality orderings and that, in general, this leads to improvements in the functional representation and modeling of the data. The versatility of our method is also illustrated with an application to a colon cancer study that deals with high-dimensional gene expression arrays.This paper shows that ML-stringing is a feasible alternative to the UDS-based version. Also, it opens a window to new contributions to the field of FDA and the study of high-dimensional data. This research was funded in part by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades grant numbers PID2019-104901RB-I00 and MTM2017-88708-P.

Over the last decade, regularized regression methods have offered alternatives for performing multi-marker analysis and feature selection in a whole genome context. The process of defining a list of genes that will characterize an expression profile remains unclear. It currently relies upon advanced statistics and can use an agnostic point of view or include some a priori knowledge, but overfitting remains a problem. This paper introduces a methodology to deal with the variable selection and model estimation problems in the high-dimensional set-up, which can be particularly useful in the whole genome context. Results are validated using simulated data and a real dataset from a triple-negative breast cancer study. This work was partially supported by a research grant from Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI 15/00117), co-funded by FEDER, to M. Martín.

Positive implications of schizotypal personality have been discussed in the literature in the last few years, higher creativity being one of them. Specifically, positive and negative schizotypy dimensions have been respectively related to higher and lower creativity levels. However, a considerable amount of null associations between these two constructs have also been reported. This heterogeneity could be due to the multidimensionality of both constructs. The aim of this study is to go deeper into the general relationship between creativity and schizotypy, disentangling the associations between specific dimensions of these two constructs. We assessed schizotypy in a sample of 154 volunteers. They also filled out creative personality and creative products questionnaires. Regression analyses showed no effect of scores in the positive dimension of schizotypy over either of the two creativity measures. Interestingly, lower scores in the negative dimension were associated with more creative products, whereas lower scores in the disorganized dimension were associated with a more creative personality. Our results point toward the need to use assessment tools tapping into the different aspects of creativity and to take into account the multidimensional nature of schizotypal personality in order to clarify the relationship between these two complex constructs.

During 1983–2009, Sri Lanka lived a bloody civil war that left more than 100,000 casualties. Far from being peaceful, the long-awaited post-war phase has witnessed several periodic episodes of violence between some of the different ethnoreligious groups in the island. This chapter analyses the comments made on YouTube videos on the attacks on Sri Lankan Muslims in Ampara and Kandy’s districts in 2018. Applying the Discourse-Historical approach as the main theoretical framework and, precisely the argumentation strategy of topoi (Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: Sage, 2015), I explore how linguistic structures of online extreme speech embody and shape stereotypes of the targeted Muslim minority, hinder the process of reconciliation and contribute to deepening the ethnic and religious division in the country.

© 2021 by the authors., B-cell regeneration during therapy has been considered as a strong prognostic factor in multiple myeloma (MM). However, the effects of therapy and hemodilution in bone marrow (BM) B-cell recovery have not been systematically evaluated during follow-up. MM (n = 177) and adult (≥50y) healthy donor (HD; n = 14) BM samples were studied by next-generation flow (NGF) to simultaneously assess measurable residual disease (MRD) and residual normal B-cell populations. BM hemodilution was detected in 41 out of 177 (23%) patient samples, leading to lower total B-cell, B-cell precursor (BCP) and normal plasma cell (nPC) counts. Among MM BM, decreased percentages (vs. HD) of BCP, transitional/naïve B-cell (TBC/NBC) and nPC populations were observed at diagnosis. BM BCP increased after induction therapy, whereas TBC/NBC counts remained abnormally low. At day+100 postautologous stem cell transplantation, a greater increase in BCP with recovered TBC/NBC cell numbers but persistently low memory B-cell and nPC counts were found. At the end of therapy, complete response (CR) BM samples showed higher CD19− nPC counts vs. non-CR specimens. MRD positivity was associated with higher BCP and nPC percentages. Hemodilution showed a negative impact on BM B-cell distribution. Different BM B-cell regeneration profiles are present in MM at diagnosis and after therapy with no significant association with patient outcome., This work has been supported by the International Myeloma Foundation-Black Swan Research Initiative, the EuroFlow Consortium (grant LSHB-CT-2006-018708); Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Cáncer (CIBER-ONC; Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Madrid, Spain and FONDOS FEDER), numbers: CB16/12/00400, CB16/12/00233, CB16/12/00369, CB16/12/00489 and CB16/12/00480; grant from Bilateral Cooperation Program between Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior-CAPES (Brasília/Brazil) and Dirección General de Políticas Universitárias (DGPU)-Ministério de Educación, Cultura y Deportes (Madrid/Spain) number DGPU 311/15; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro of Brazil (FAPERJ) numbers: E26/110.105/2014 and E26/102.191/2013; grant from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico of Brazil (CNPQ), number: 400194/2014-7. R.M.d.P. was supported by a grant from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES/DGPU), number: 000281/2016-06 and CAPES/PROEX 641/2018, Brazil; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro of Brazil (FAPERJ) number: E01/200/537/2018.

ObjectivesDespite the demonstrated efficacy of physiotherapy in palliative care programmes, there are scarce data of its real-life impact on patients’ and caregivers’ wellness and stress. Our aim was to assess effectiveness of a 30-day physiotherapy programme in psychological wellness and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of patients with advanced chronic diseases or cancer and in their caregivers’ stress.MethodsQuasiexperimental before–after study applying personalised kinesitherapy, exercise with curative effects, respiratory physiotherapy, therapeutic massages and ergotherapy. Psychological wellness, HRQoL and caregiver’s strain outcomes were measured.Results207 patients (60% men, with a mean age of 73.6±12 years) were included; 129 (62.3%) with advanced cancer, and the remaining 78 with advanced chronic diseases. Psychological wellness (Emotional Stress Detection Tool decreased from 12.4±3 to 11±3; pConclusionsA personalised physiotherapy programme incorporated to integral palliative care improved psychological wellness, HRQoL and caregivers’ strain of patients with advanced chronic diseases and cancer.

The term schizotypy refers to a group of stable personality traits with attributes similar to symptoms of schizophrenia, usually classified in terms of positive, negative or cognitive disorganization symptoms. The observation of increased spreading of semantic activation in individuals with schizotypal traits has led to the hypothesis that thought disorder, one of the characteristics of cognitive disorganization, stems from semantic disturbances. Nevertheless, it is still not clear under which specific circumstances (i.e., automatic or controlled processing, direct or indirect semantic relation) schizotypy affects semantic priming or whether it does affect it at all. We conducted two semantic priming studies with volunteers varying in schizotypy, one with directly related prime-target pairs and another with indirectly related pairs. Our participants completed a lexical decision task with related and unrelated pairs presented at short (250 ms) and long (750 ms) stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). Then, they responded to the brief versions of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire and the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences, both of which include measures of cognitive disorganization. Bayesian mixed-effects models indicated expected effects of SOA and semantic relatedness, as well as an interaction between relatedness and directness (greater priming effects for directly related pairs). Even though our analyses demonstrated good sensitivity, we observed no influence of cognitive disorganization over semantic priming. Our study provides no compelling evidence that schizotypal symptoms, specifically those associated with the cognitive disorganization dimension, are rooted in an increased spreading of semantic activation in priming tasks.

The study of high-dimensional data is becoming a common trend in modern research. Recently, stringing emerged as a methodology to treat high-dimensional sample vectors as realizations of smooth stochastic processes. Under the hypothesis of noisy and order-perturbed measurements, stringing introduces smooth transitions between predictors and takes advantage of Functional Data Analysis (FDA) to study the data. Once a functional representation is achieved, it is possible to visualize intrinsic patterns, or fit functional regression models.We propose manifold learning as an alternative to multidimensional scaling in the reordering step. In a simulation study we show that our proposal achieves smaller relative order errors, and that it can recover more complex relationships between predictors.

In this article, we discuss the use of advanced statistical techniques (functional data analysis) in millimeter-wave (mm-wave) spectroscopy for biomedical applications. We employ a W-band transmit–receive unit with a reference channel to acquire spectral data. The choice of the W-band is based on a tradeoff between penetration through the skin providing an upper bound for the frequencies and spectral content across the band. The data obtained are processed using functional principal component logit regression (FPCLoR), which enables to obtain a predictive model for sustained hyperglycemia, typically associated with diabetes. The predictions are based on the transmission data from noninvasive mm-wave spectrometer at W-band. We show that there exists a frequency range most suitable for identification, classification, and prediction of sustained hyperglycemia when evaluating the functional parameter of the functional logit model ( β ). This allows for the optimization of the spectroscopic instrument in the aim to obtain a compact and potential low-cost noninvasive instrument for hyperglycemia assessment. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that the statistical tools alleviate the problem of calibration, which is a serious obstacle in similar measurements at terahertz and IR frequencies.

Deletion of the long arm of chromosome 6 (del6q) is the most frequent cytogenetic abnormality in Waldenström macroglobulinaemia (WM), occurring in approximately 50% of patients. Its effect on patient outcome has not been completely established. We used fluorescence in situ hybridisation to analyse the prevalence of del6q in selected CD19+ bone marrow cells of 225 patients with newly diagnosed immunoglobulin M (IgM) monoclonal gammopathies. Del6q was identified in one of 27 (4%) cases of IgM‐monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance, nine of 105 (9%) of asymptomatic WM (aWM), and 28/93 (30%) of symptomatic WM (sWM), and was associated with adverse prognostic features and higher International Prognostic Scoring System for WM (IPSSWM) score. Asymptomatic patients with del6q ultimately required therapy more often and had a shorter time to transformation (TT) to symptomatic disease (median TT, 30 months vs. 199 months, respectively, P < 0·001). When treatment was required, 6q‐deleted patients had shorter progression‐free survival (median 20 vs. 47 months, P < 0·001). The presence of del6q translated into shorter overall survival (OS), irrespective of the initial diagnosis, with a median OS of 90 compared with 131 months in non‐del6q patients (P = 0·01). In summary, our study shows that del6q in IgM gammopathy is associated with symptomatic disease, need for treatment and poorer clinical outcomes., Irene Dogliotti was supported by the SIE (Società Italiana di Ematologia) and AIL (Associazione Italiana contro le Leucemie, Linfomi e Mieloma). Cristina Jiménez was supported by the ISCIII (Contrato Sara Borrell CD19/00030). María García‐Álvarez was supported by the Fundación Española de Hematología y Hemoterapia (FEHH). María del Carmen Chillón was supported by the Asociación Española Contra El Cáncer (AECC). María Eugenia Sarasquete was supported by the Miguel Servet Programme (CP13/00080) of the ISCIII.