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There is scarce research on stress in Spanish police officers and on the use of instruments to assess this construct in this professional group. In Spain, the DECORE questionnaire has been one of the most used. Nevertheless, it had not been previously applied to police officers. The aim of this study was to analyze both the construct validity and the reliability of the original model of 44 items. A cross-sectional design and a non-probabilistic quota sampling were used. A total of 223 Spanish police officers participated. 202 police personnel were men (90.6%) and 21 were women (9.4%). The average age was 41 years old (SD = 7.52). These police officers answered the DECORE questionnaire. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was carried out. The results showed an unsatisfactory adjustment using the original model of 44 items. A final solution of 21 items and four factors was formulated with both suitable validity and reliability indexes. In this model, 23 items that did not weigh highly in any of the four factors were removed. The DECORE-21 questionnaire is recommended to assess work-related stress in police officers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by the need of poor and rural Mexico, where the population has limited access to advanced medical technology and services, we have developed a new paradigm for medical diagnostic based on the technology of “Volumetric Electromagnetic Phase Shift Spectroscopy” (VEPS), as an inexpensive partial substitute to medical imaging. VEPS, can detect changes in tissue properties inside the body through non-contact, multi-frequency electromagnetic measurements from the exterior of the body, and thereby provide rapid and inexpensive diagnostics in a way that is amenable for use in economically disadvantaged parts of the world. We describe the technology and report results from a limited pilot study with 46 healthy volunteers and eight patients with CT radiology confirmed brain edema and brain hematoma. Data analysis with a non-parametric statistical Mann-Whitney U test, shows that in the frequency range of from 26 MHz to 39 MHz, VEPS can distinguish non-invasively and without contact, with a statistical significance of p<0.05, between healthy subjects and those with a medical conditions in the brain. In the frequency range of between 153 MHz to 166 MHz it can distinguish with a statistical significance of p<0.05 between subjects with brain edema and those with a hematoma in the brain. A classifier build from measurements in these two frequency ranges can provide instantaneous diagnostic of the medical condition of the brain of a patient, from a single set of measurements. While this is a small-scale pilot study, it illustrates the potential of VEPS to change the paradigm of medical diagnostic of brain injury through a VEPS classifier-based technology. Obviously substantially larger-scale studies are needed to verify and expand on the findings in this small pilot study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]