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Copyright of Revista Española de Cardiología (18855857) is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

• Brain-dedicated PET scanner detects Alzheimer's disease using the Centiloid scale. • The effectiveness of the Centiloid Scale requiring only PET images is demonstrated. • Centiloid Scale in a brain-dedicated PET can reduce the neurology burden on PET/CT. To evaluate whether the Centiloid Scale may be used to diagnose Alzheimer's Disease (AD) pathology effectively with the only use of amyloid PET imaging modality from a brain-dedicated PET scanner. This study included 26 patients with amyloid PET images with 3 different radiotracers. All patients were acquired both on a PET/CT and a brain-dedicated PET scanner (CareMiBrain, CMB), from which 4 different reconstructions were implemented. A new pipeline was proposed and used for the PET image analysis based on the original Centiloid Scale processing pipeline, but with only PET images. The Youden's Index was employed to calculate the optimal cutoffs for diagnosis and evaluated by the AUC, accuracy, precision, and recall metrics. The Centiloid Scale (CL) processing pipeline was validated with and without the use of MR images. The CL cutoffs for AD pathology diagnosis on the PET/CT and the 4 CMB reconstructions were 34.4 ± 2.2, 43.5 ± 3.5, 51.9 ± 12.5, 57.5 ± 6.8 and 41.8 ± 1.2 respectively. Overall, for these cutoffs all metrics obtained the maximum score. The Centiloid scale applied to PET images allows for AD pathology diagnosis. The CMB scanner can be used with the Centiloid scale to automatically assist in the diagnosis of AD pathology, relieving the large burden of neurodegenerative diseases on a traditional PET/CT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the climatic conditions in central-southern Chile, there are high heating energy consumption and PM2.5 emissions. Among the alternatives to mitigate it, the Chilean government has implemented subsidies to improve the housings envelope and to replace firewood stoves by pellet stoves and air-to-air heat pumps. Accordingly, for evaluating the effectivity of above-mentioned initiatives, this study proposes to identify the optimal solutions that minimize the energy demand, the environmental impacts, and the global costs, for social housing using different insulation materials and heating systems in four Chilean cities located in central-southern Chile. Results reveal pellet stoves with lower environmental impacts but higher global costs, while heat pumps offer an intermediate solution that can be enhanced with a greener electricity grid, but the global costs are still too high. Firewood stoves could be optimal solution depending on optimization weighting factors. The study emphasizes prioritizing housing envelope improvements in energy policies, followed by heating system enhancements. Although replacing firewood poses challenges due to costs, it is crucial for Chile's 2050 decarbonization goal. This research provides valuable insights into the complexities and potential solutions for transitioning away from firewood in Chilean social housing. • Woodstove replaced by pellet stove or heat pump reduce environmental impact by 34–45 %. • Heat pumps present global costs 34 %–88 % higher than wood stoves. • To improve the housing envelope is the first recommended public policy. • Public policies must simultaneously subsidy initial and operational cost. • Trade-off: global cost vs. environmental impacts determines optimal approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Administration of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) prolongs QTc corrected interval (QTc). The effect and safety of Lopinavir/Ritonavir in combination with these therapies have seldom been studied.Objectives: Our aim was to evaluate changes in QTc in patients receiving double (Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin) and triple therapy (Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin + Lopinavir/Ritonavir) to treat COVID-19. Secondary outcome was the incidence of in-hospital all-cause mortality.Methods: Patients under treatment with double (DT) and triple therapy (TT) for COVID-19 were consecutively included in this prospective observational study. Serial in-hospital electrocardiograms were performed to measure QTc at baseline and during therapy.Results: 168 patients (±66.2 years old) were included: 32.1% received DT and 67.9% received TT. The mean baseline QTc was 410.33 ms. Patients under DT and TT prolonged QTc interval respect baseline values (p < 0.001), without significant differences between both therapy groups (p = 0.748). Overall, 33 patients (19.6%) had a peak QTc and/or an increase QTc 60 ms from baseline, with a higher prevalence among those with hypokalemia (p = 0.003). All-cause mortality was similar between both strategy groups (p = 0.093) and high risk QTc prolongation was no related to clinical events in this series.Conclusions: DT and TT prolong the QTc in patients with COVID-19. Addition of Lopinavir/Ritonavir on top of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin did not increase QTc compared to DT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study a set of 25 Mediterranean wetlands located in the southeastern part of the Iberian Peninsula was studied to identify priority areas for conservation using amphibian assemblages. Two complementary approaches were used, cluster and parsimony analysis of endemicity (PAE). Cluster analysis allows to group wetlands based on their amphibian’s assemblage similarities. PAE was used to identify areas that concentrate the highest species richness and are unique in terms of amphibian composition. Different criteria were used to select wetlands for conservation: species richness, exclusive and idiosyncratic species occurrences, and the number of wetlands in which such species appeared. In order to know if the selected wetlands for conservation are appropriate to preserve the amphibian community the degree of nestedness among wetlands was calculated. In conclusion, the obtained results showed three different zones from highly conserved to highly degraded ones. One action plan is proposed for shielding nine wetlands (Areal, Castillo, Grande, Orcera, Pedernoso, Perales, Santisteban, Siles and Fernandina) in the Alto Guadalquivir region which would preserve the 100% of amphibian’s richness present in the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Amphibians epitomize the modern biodiversity crisis, and attract great attention from the scientific community since a complex puzzle of factors has influence on their disappearance. However, these factors are multiple and spatially variable, and declining in each locality is due to a particular combination of causes. This study shows a suitable statistical procedure to determine threats to amphibian species in medium size administrative areas. For our study case, ten biological and ecological variables feasible to affect the survival of 15 amphibian species were categorized and reduced through Principal Component Analysis. The principal components extracted were related to ecological plasticity, reproductive potential, and specificity of breeding habitats. Finally, the factor scores of species were joined in a presence-absence matrix that gives us information to identify where and why conservation management are requires. In summary, this methodology provides the necessary information to maximize benefits of conservation measures in small areas by identifying which ecological factors need management efforts and where should we focus them on. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: To study the incidence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) in Mexican women with a history of infertility and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) compared with women without PCOS matched by age, pregestational body mass index (BMI), and parity. Design: Historic cohort study. Setting: Level three medical institution. Patient(s): Group 1 (n = 52), women with a history of infertility and PCOS, and group 2 (n = 52), women without PCOS. Inclusion criteria were singleton pregnancy with ≤13 weeks of gestation. Exclusion criteria were pregestational diabetes mellitus and/or concomitant diseases. Intervention(s): Diagnosis of GDM was based on a 3-hour, 100-g oral glucose tolerance test (GTT) performed during the second trimester. Main Outcome Measure(s): Incidence and relative risk (RR) for GDM. Result(s): The incidence of GDM was 26.9% and 9.6% for groups 1 and 2, respectively (RR = 2.8; 95% confidence interval 1.08–7.2). No other between-group differences were observed in the incidence of miscarriage, preterm birth, premature rupture of membranes, preeclampsia, stillbirth, fetal malformations, or small or large for gestational age newborns. Conclusion(s): Pregnant Mexican women with a history of infertility and PCOS are at increased risk for developing GDM. This risk should be considered beginning early in the second trimester for a timely intervention and to improve the maternal–fetal prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: One of the major challenges that visual tracking algorithms face nowadays is being able to cope with changes in the appearance of the target during tracking. Linear subspace models have been extensively studied and are possibly the most popular way of modelling target appearance. We introduce a linear subspace representation in which the appearance of a face is represented by the addition of two approximately independent linear subspaces modelling facial expressions and illumination, respectively. This model is more compact than previous bilinear or multilinear approaches. The independence assumption notably simplifies system training. We only require two image sequences. One facial expression is subject to all possible illuminations in one sequence and the face adopts all facial expressions under one particular illumination in the other. This simple model enables us to train the system with no manual intervention. We also revisit the problem of efficiently fitting a linear subspace-based model to a target image and introduce an additive procedure for solving this problem. We prove that Matthews and Baker’s inverse compositional approach makes a smoothness assumption on the subspace basis that is equivalent to Hager and Belhumeur’s, which worsens convergence. Our approach differs from Hager and Belhumeur’s additive and Matthews and Baker’s compositional approaches in that we make no smoothness assumptions on the subspace basis. In the experiments conducted we show that the model introduced accurately represents the appearance variations caused by illumination changes and facial expressions. We also verify experimentally that our fitting procedure is more accurate and has better convergence rate than the other related approaches, albeit at the expense of a slight increase in computational cost. Our approach can be used for tracking a human face at standard video frame rates on an average personal computer. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Until now, design of the annual influenza vaccine has relied on phylogenetic or whole-sequence comparisons of the viral coat proteins hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, with vaccine effectiveness assumed to correlate monotonically to the vaccine–influenza sequence difference. We use a theory from statistical mechanics to quantify the non-monotonic immune response that results from antigenic drift in the epitopes of the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins. The results explain the ineffectiveness of the 2003–2004 influenza vaccine in the United States and provide an accurate measure by which to optimize the effectiveness of future annual influenza vaccines. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]