La excavación de un asentamiento rural cercano a Lleida permitió recuperar un importante contexto cerámico datado en los siglos I-II d. C. El repertorio cerámico recuperado incluye una amplia representación de vajillas de mesa romana; en especial, sigillata hispánica. Un gran número de vasos presenta grafitos con significados muy diferentes. La riqueza y diversidad del conjunto permite hacer algunas consideraciones sobre las condiciones de su formación y la función del lugar, así como sobre la difusión de la cultura escrita entre la población rural del periodo.

In the last decade there have been a large number of proposals in the field of Critique-based Recommenders. Critique-based recommenders are data-driven in their nature since they use a conversational cyclical recommendation process to elicit user feedback. In the literature, the proposals made differ mainly in two aspects: in the source of data and in how this data is analyzed to extract knowledge for providing users with recommendations. In this paper, we propose new algorithms that address these two aspects. Firstly, we propose a new algorithm, called HOR, which integrates several data sources, such as current user preferences (i.e., a critique), product descriptions, previous critiquing sessions by other users, and users’ opinions expressed as ratings on social media web sites. Secondly, we propose adding compatibility and weighting scores to turn user behavior into knowledge to HOR and a previous state-of-the-art approach named HGR to help both algorithms make smarter recommendations. We have evaluated our proposals in two ways: with a simulator and with real users. A comparison of our proposals with state-of-the-art approaches shows that the new recommendation algorithms significantly outperform previous ones.

Objective: Analyze the effects of CR on cognitive performance in adults with subjective cognitive complaints at follow-up.

Method: We analyzed the factorial structure of the three constructs defined in cognitive performance (Episodic memory, Working memory, and General cognitive performance) separately to search for evidence of the invariance of the measurement model. We then developed four structural nested models to analyze the relationship between CR and cognitive performance, measured at baseline and after approximately 18 months, in 266 participants older than 50 years with subjective cognitive complaints.

Results: The nested models revealed the following main results: direct effects of CR on all cognitive constructs at baseline and also indirect effects on the same constructs at follow-up, and indirect effects of CR on other cognitive constructs at follow-up via working memory at follow-up.

Conclusion: The findings show that the proposed model is useful for measuring the influence of CR on cognitive performance in follow-up studies and that CR has a positive influence on cognitive performance at follow-up via working memory. CR may enhance mechanisms of information processing, favoring performance of tasks involving other cognitive constructs in older adults with subjective cognitive complaints.

Hydrodynamic interactions (HIs), namely, solvent-mediated long-range interactions between dispersed particles, play a crucial role in the assembly and dynamics of many active systems, from swimming bacteria to swarms of propelling microrobots. We experimentally demonstrate the emergence of long-living hydrodynamic bound states between model microswimmers at low Reynolds numbers. A rotating magnetic field forces colloidal hematite microparticles to translate at a constant and frequency-tunable speed close to a bounding plane in a viscous fluid. At high driving frequency, HIs dominate over magnetic dipolar ones, and close propelling particles couple into bound states by adjusting their translational speed to optimize the transport of the pair. The physical system is described by considering the HIs with the boundary surface and the effect of gravity, providing an excellent agreement with the experimental data for all the range of parameters explored. Moreover, we show that in dense suspensions, these bound states can be extended to one-dimensional arrays of particles assembled by the sole HIs. Our results manifest the importance of the boundary surface in the interaction and dynamics of confined propelling microswimmers.

Introduction: Labor insertion for young people is probably more difficult nowadays than it was a few decades ago in all productive sectors and in academic education. A few decades ago, having a university degree was a guarantee of quick labor insertion, but nowadays, although having a university degree may somewhat alleviate the unemployment rate, it is still high  among recent university graduates. In this paper, we show the differential profile of the companies who do hire recent graduates as compared to those who do not.
Methodology: We worked with a sample of 1,325 employers from the business world of Catalonia, who were administered the questionnaire prepared adhoc during 2014.

Results: The main results show that the more workers a company has, the higher the probability that they will hire recent graduates. Companies with a high percentage of graduated  workers are more likely to hire recent graduates. Companies who are willing to work with Agency for the Quality of the University System of Catalonia hire more than those who are not. And finally, the service sector hires more than construction or industry.
Conclusions: In the present study we have shown a differential pattern between the companies that hire recent graduates or not, a very important aspect because this could help define university policies to facilitate the transition to the labor market.

Developing a recommender system for events raises several issues that are different from other domains. Events rapidly disappear, users’ preferences quickly change over time, and direct feedback does not exist for events that have not taken place. As the recommendations will not be further available, user’s context become a key factor for providing accurate recommendations. In this paper we introduce EventAware, a context-aware mobile recommender system to personalize the agenda of users attending to a congress. In particular, we first introduce the EventAware system, which includes an intuitive user interface with an attractive design to enhance user experience. EventAware incorporates some implicit contextual information, automatically initializes both the user’s profiles with minimal user interaction and the properties of the items and it uses a context-aware tag-based recommender algorithm. We demonstrate its usability through a live-user case-study in one of the biggest events of mobile technology in the world, held in Barcelona.

The total energy of acoustic emission (AE) events in externally stressed materials diverges when approaching macroscopic failure. Numerical and conceptual models explain this accelerated seismic release (ASR) as the approach to a critical point that coincides with ultimate failure. Here, we report ASR during soft uniaxial compression of three silica-based (SiO2) nanoporous materials. Instead of a singular critical point, the distribution of AE energies is stationary, and variations in the activity rate are sufficient to explain the presence of multiple periods of ASR leading to distinct brittle failure events. We propose that critical failure is suppressed in the AE statistics by mechanisms of transient hardening. Some of the critical exponents estimated from the experiments are compatible with mean field models, while others are still open to interpretation in terms of the solution of frictional and fracture avalanche models.

Executive Functions (EF) are fundamental during childhood since they participate actively in such heterogeneous domains as mental and physical health, learning, school performance, and cognitive, social and psychological development. Their evaluation is of interest, both in the field of clinical practice and research. Several criticisms and discussions have been generated regarding the available resources for its measurement, so it is necessary to have evaluation tasks that present adequate psychometric properties and that allow to evaluate each EF with the least possible interference of other processes. This paper aims to present the Tareas de Autorregulación Cognitiva Battery (TAC), a computerized platform designed for independent measurement of inhibition, working memory and cognitive flexibility, as well as obtaining evidence of construct validity from a set of tasks that compose it. 103 children between 9 and 12 years of age from the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina, were assessed. The results of the factor analysis showed a solution of 3 factors, which significantly explain 52.79% of the variance. These results, together with the scientific evidence presented by previous studies, provide empirical support of the validity of the tasks analyzed in the present study. Thus, this study contributes to the literature by presenting a computerized battery for specific and independent assessment of the different executive processes, valid for its application in children.

Background

Self-determination is a psychological construct that applies to both the general population and to individuals with disabilities that can be self-determined with adequate accommodations and opportunities. As the relevance of self-determination-related skills in life has been recently acknowledged, researchers have created a measure to assess self-determination in adolescents and young adults with and without disabilities. The Self-Determination Inventory: Student Report (Spanish interim version) is empirically being validated into Spanish.

Aims

As this scale is the first assessment addressed to all youth, further exploration of its psychometric properties is required to ensure the reliability of the self-determination measurement and gain further insight into the construct when applied to youth with and without disabilities.

Methods

More than 600 participants were asked to complete the scale. The impact of disability on the item response distributions across the dimensions of self-determination was explored.

Outcomes

Differential item functioning (DIF) was found in only 5 of the scale’s 45 items. Differences primary favored youth without disabilities.

Conclusions

The weak presence of DIF across the items supports the instrument’s psychometrical robustness when measuring self-determination in youth with and without disabilities and provides further understanding of the self-determination construct. Implications and future research directions are also discussed.

In this work, we numerically study a dense colloidal suspension flowing through a small outlet driven by a pressure drop using lattice-Boltzmann methods. This system shows intermittent flow regimes that precede clogging events. Several pieces of evidence suggest that the temperature controls the dynamic state of the system when the driving force and the aperture size are fixed. When the temperature is low, the suspension's flow can be interrupted during long time periods, which can be even two orders of magnitude larger than the system's characteristic time (Stokes). We also find that strong thermal noise does not allow the formation of stable aggregate structures avoiding extreme clogging events, but, at the same time, it randomizes the particle trajectories and disturbs the advective particle flow through the aperture. Moreover, examining the particle velocity statistics, we obtain that in the plane normal to the pressure drop the colloids always move as free particles regardless of the temperature value. In the pressure drop direction, at high temperature the colloids experience a simple balance between advective and diffusive transport, but at low temperature the nature of the flow is much more complex, correlating with the occurrence of very long clogging events.

Power-law–type probability density functions spanning several orders of magnitude are found for different avalanche properties. We propose a methodology to overcome empirical constraints that limit the range of truncated power-law distributions. By considering catalogs of events that cover different observation windows, the maximum likelihood estimation of a global power-law exponent is computed. This methodology is applied to amplitude and energy distributions of acoustic emission avalanches in failure-under-compression experiments of a nanoporous silica glass, finding in some cases global exponents in an unprecedented broad range: 4.5 decades for amplitudes and 9.5 decades for energies. In the latter case, however, strict statistical analysis suggests experimental limitations might alter the power-law behavior.

Si bien la mecánica de Newton es considerada como la primera gran contribución del método científico aplicado a la nueva ciencia de la dinámica de los cuerpos, queda bastante silenciado el papel relevante de Kepler en el progreso inicial de esta disciplina.

Este olvido está tan interiorizado que en los libros actuales de mecánica únicamente se mencionan sus tres leyes como enunciados curiosos y bien certeros, pero sin profundizar en la determinante importancia de los mismos. Tanto es así que está totalmente olvidado que Kepler resolvió analíticamente el problema cinemático de la posición de un planeta en función del tiempo (las ecuaciones horarias).

This study deals with the positions and people of the subordinate administration of the province of Raetia since its creation, at the end of the 1st century BC, until the first half of the 3rd century AD. The data that we know of all of them is offered to obtain an overview of this administrative area that has often been forgotten.

El presente estudio trata los cargos y personajes de la administración subalterna de la provincia de Raetia desde su creación, a finales del s. I a. C., hasta la primera mitad del s. III. Se ofrecen los datos que conocemos de todos ellos para obtener una visión general de este ámbito administrativo que a menudo ha sido olvidado.

A better understanding of how sports injuries occur in order to improve their prevention is needed for medical, economic, scientific and sports success reasons. This narrative review aims to explain the mechanisms that underlie the occurrence of sports injuries, and an innovative approach for their prevention on the basis of complex dynamic systems approach. First, we explain the multilevel organisation of living systems and how function of the musculoskeletal system may be impaired. Second, we use both, a constraints approach and a connectivity hypothesis to explain why and how the susceptibility to sports injuries may suddenly increase. Constraints acting at multiple levels and timescales replace the static and linear concept of risk factors, and the connectivity hypothesis brings an understanding of how the accumulation of microinjuries creates a macroscopic non-linear effect, that is, how a common motor action may trigger a severe injury. Finally, a recap of practical examples and challenges for the future illustrates how the complex dynamic systems standpoint, changing the way of thinking about sports injuries, offers innovative ideas for improving sports injury prevention.

L’article analitza els trets fonamentals de l’organització del poblament rural al curs inferior de l’Ebre. Es defineixen la tipologia i distribució de l’hàbitat, amb particular atenció als exemples coneguts d’arquitectura residencial, i s’analitza la relació entre el model d’ocupació del territori i un sistema agrari definit per l’organització racional d’inversions i de recursos, la integració d’activitats complementàries a l’agricultura desenvolupat entre finals del segle I a.C i els segles I-II. Es valoren, igualment, aspectes de l’estructura de la propietat i la condició de certs grups socials.

Artificial particle ices are model systems of constrained, interacting particles. They have been introduced theoretically to study ice-manifolds emergent from frustration, along with domain wall and grain boundary dynamics, doping, pinning-depinning, controlled transport of topological defects, avalanches, and memory effects. Recently such particle-based ices have been experimentally realized with vortices in nano-patterned superconductors or gravitationally trapped colloids. Here we demonstrate that, although these ices are generally considered equivalent to magnetic spin ices, they can access a novel spectrum of phenomenologies that are inaccessible to the latter. With experiments, theory and simulations we demonstrate that in mixed coordination geometries, entropy-driven negative monopoles spontaneously appear at a density determined by the vertex-mixture ratio. Unlike its spin-based analogue, the colloidal system displays a “fragile ice” manifold, where local energetics oppose the ice rule, which is instead enforced through conservation of the global topological charge. The fragile colloidal ice, stabilized by topology, can be spontaneously broken by topological charge transfer.

The aim of this study is to identify dynamics of social learning between amphorae workshops during the the Roman Empire. The Baetica province developed a massive infrastructure of olive oil production that supplied the Western provinces of Rome for almost 300 years. The olive oil produced in this area was shipped through maritime and riverine transport networks in a standardized amphoric shape made in several workshops spread around the region. These workshops have generated a large amount of evidence but it is still difficult to understand through archaeological proxies how the production of amphorae was organized.

We apply here an evolutionary framework to find links between workshops through the morphometric similarities of the amphorae they produced. The suggested approach identifies how individual potters acquired and transmitted technical skills by exploring small yet statistical significant differences in the amphorae made in 5 different workshops. Multivariate methods are used to cluster a variety of amphorae based on morphometric measurements and the outcome shows that the analysis is useful even when a high degree of standardization exists, such as was the case for Roman amphorae (i.e. Dressel 20).

Results suggest that morphometric similarity is inversely correlated with spatial distance between workshops. This pattern suggests that pottery-making techniques were transmitted through oblique transmission with little or no movement of potters between distant workshops. The conclusion is that morphometric similarity may be an effective proxy to identify social learning dynamics even amongst workshops producing exactly the same amphoric type.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the dynamical distribution of pain in constant cycling and running tasks up to the point of exhaustion. Ten participants (M = 20.8 years old, SD = ± 1.03) ran and cycled at a “hard” intensity level (e.g., Borg’s RPE (6–20) = 15). During task performance, participants reported their pain on a body map every 15s. Three distinct and consistent pain distribution patterns emerged: adders who added pain locations, jumpers who switched among pain locations, and adders-jumpers who both added and switched among pain locations throughout the effort. These distribution patterns had a significant effect (p < .001) on pain stability (i.e., the time spent within the same pain location) and on total number of changes in pain locations (p < 0.04); which differed between the adders and jumpers (p < .035). Task endurance was associated with the total number of changes of pain locations (r = .46, p < .04). Finally, a significant effect of time on the number of symmetric locations χ2 (10,4) = 16.17, p < .003 emerged in running. Idiosyncratic pain distribution patterns with more switching among pain locations throughout effort seemed to increase time on task. Further scientific evidence is needed for confirming the extent to which idiosyncratic pain distribution patterns account for and/or help pain management within clinical settings

Background: Although major depressive disorder is usually treated with antidepressants, only 50–70% of the patients respond to this treatment. This study applied Jacobson and Truax’s (1991) methodology (reliable change index, RCI) to a sample of depressive patients being treated with one of two antidepressants to evaluate their functioning and the effect of certain variables such as severity and age.

Method: Seventy-three depressive patients medicated with Escitalopram (n = 37) or Duloxetine (n = 36) were assessed using the Hamilton depression rating scale over a 24-week period.

Results: They indicate that the RCI stabilizes in an absolute way starting in week 16, and it is not until week 24 that all of the patients become part of the functional population. We found limited statistical significance with respect to the RCI and the external variables.

Conclusion: Our study suggests the need to accompany the traditional statistical methodology with some other clinical estimation systems capable of going beyond a simple subtraction between pre and posttreatment values. Hence, it is concluded that RCI estimations could be stronger and more stable than the classical statistical techniques.

Quantitative methods to describe the participation to debate of Members of Parliament and the parties they belong to are lacking. Here we propose a new approach that combines topic modeling with complex networks techniques, and use it to characterize the political discourse at the New Zealand Parliament. We implement a Latent Dirichlet Allocation model to discover the thematic structure of the government’s digital database of parliamentary speeches, and construct from it two-mode networks linking Members of the Parliament to the topics they discuss. Our results show how topic popularity changes over time and allow us to relate the trends followed by political parties in their discourses with specific social, economic and legislative events. Moreover, the community analysis of the two-mode network projections reveals which parties dominate the political debate as well as how much they tend to specialize in a small or large number of topics. Our work demonstrates the benefits of performing quantitative analysis in a domain normally reserved for qualitative approaches, providing an efficient way to measure political activity.

Structural Equation Models (SEM) is among of the most extensively applied statistical techniques in the study of human behavior in the fields of Neuroscience and Cognitive Neuroscience. This paper reviews the application of SEM to estimate functional and effective connectivity models in work published since 2001. The articles analyzed were compiled from Journal Citation Reports, PsycInfo, Pubmed, and Scopus, after searching with the following keywords: fMRI, SEMs, and Connectivity.

Results: A 100 papers were found, of which 25 were rejected due to a lack of sufficient data on basic aspects of the construction of SEM. The other 75 were included and contained a total of 160 models to analyze, since most papers included more than one model. The analysis of the explained variance (R2) of each model yields an effect of the type of design used, the type of population studied, the type of study, the existence of recursive effects in the model, and the number of paths defined in the model. Along with these comments, a series of recommendations are included for the use of SEM to estimate of functional and effective connectivity models.