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Background: Hereditary transthyretin (TTR) amyloidosis (ATTRv) is a heterogeneous disease with a clinical presentation that varies according to geographical area and TTR mutation. The symptoms of Val50Met-ATTRv are mainly neuropathic and progress to complete disability and death in most untreated patients within 10 to 15 years of diagnosis. The neurological effects may also be accompanied by gastrointestinal impairment, cardiomyopathy, nephropathy and/or ocular deposition. The disease is thus associated with a high degree of patient disability. Accordingly, we aimed to describe the psychosocial burden associated with ATTRv in a group of patients, asymptomatic Val50Met carriers, relatives and caregivers in the endemic focus of the disease in Majorca via a survey addressing various aspects related to psychosocial burden. We performed a an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional and multicentre study in order to analyze the prevalence of self-reported impact of ATTRv disease upon their daily life. In addition to the self-knowledge, fear and burden related to the disease. The survey was disseminated during the regular follow up at the outpatient clinic of the Hospital Universitario Son Llàtzer and during the meetings organized by the Andrade's Disease patients' advocacy group from the Balearic Islands. These meetings were attended also by subjects followed up by the Hospital Universitario Son Espases and their caregivers and relatives. Survey was self-administrated. No intervention was done by the investigators. 85 subjects completed the survey: 61 carrying the TTR-V50M variant and 24 caregivers or relatives.Results: Our study revealed that, although most of the population studied had had prior contact with ATTRv through affected relatives, there was still a lack of information regarding disease diagnosis. Fear of the genetic test result and psychological issues were common in our population. Moreover, the disease had a stronger impact on the daily life of our patients than that of our asymptomatic carriers. Autonomic symptoms were the main source of burden for relatives and caregivers.Conclusion: Our survey results show high psychosocial burden associated with Val50Met-ATTRv in our area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this study we retrieved the spatial distribution of mid-afternoon clouds under various synoptic regimes across the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands for the warm/convective-season, from May to October. Accurate daily cloud masks were derived by applying a daytime over land multispectral convective cloud detection algorithm spanning 15 years (1997-2011) of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer ( AVHRR) HRPT data. We processed a total of 2094 afternoon overpasses (between 1230 and 1720 UTC) corresponding to the NOAA-14, NOAA-16 and NOAA-18 spacecrafts, and stratified daily cloud masks as a function of: (1) the automated circulation-typing scheme of Jenkinson and Collinson and (2) the prevailing wind field at 850 hPa. The AVHRR warm-season cloud climatology with high spatial resolution (1.1-km) identified six representative areas (regions of interest; ROIs) with intensified cloud activity (hot spots). The results also revealed the typical spatial distribution of clouds for each synoptic regime across the whole region, identified the synoptic patterns and wind regimes under which high amounts of clouds occur for each ROIs, and showed that strong boundary layer winds in general increase the frequency of clouds. The regional cloud climatology presented here could be useful, e.g. to improve convective short-term forecasting by identifying active cloud areas for each atmospheric type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT A daytime over land multispectral cloud detection algorithm is presented to derive accurate convective cloud climatologies with high spatial resolution (1.1 km) over the Iberian Peninsula (IP) and the Balearic Islands (BI). The cloud detection scheme was designed to process Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) HRPT data and is tested here on NOAA-17 morning (0900-1200 UTC) and NOAA-16 afternoon (1200-1500 UTC) overpasses for the warm 6-month study period May-October. The algorithm consists of four spectral threshold tests applied to each pixel. Test 1 corresponds to the snow-ice removal, test 2 is the thermal infrared test, test 3 is the albedo or visible test and test 4 is the ratio between near-infrared and visible channels. The algorithm discretizes all AVHRR data into four groups called cloud-filled, cloud-free, snow-ice and snow-free radiances. The high-resolution convective cloud masks are obtained by subtracting snow-ice pixels from cloudy ones. In this article, a detailed description of the convective cloud detection scheme and the sources of error detected for each test are given, and the first seasonal and monthly regional convective cloud frequency composites are presented. Future applications of the newly proposed threshold algorithm in climate and meteorology are also discussed in this article, particularly the production of convective cloud composites for climate monitoring of storms over the IP and BI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes and compares employers' and academics' views on the importance of generic skills in training graduates and the level acquired in higher education. We used a sample of 500 companies and public institutions in the Balearic Islands that have university graduates among their employees and a sample of 173 academics from the University of the Balearic Islands. We used survey methodology to collect the data and compared the descriptive results of these two groups. These results highlight the difference of opinion of the two groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) presents high mortality in the population at risk. The aim of this work is to know the evolution, clinical and microbiological characteristics of IPD in the adult population of Majorca, since the introduction of a public funded program for pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV-13) in the pediatric population in the Balearic Islands in 2016. For this purpose, a retrospective multicenter study was carried out in which all episodes of IPD in adult patients from the four hospitals of the public health system of Majorca were included, comparing the periods between 2012 and 2015 and between 2016 and 2019. Clinical variables, serotypes and antibiotic sensitivity were collected. There were 498 cases of IPD; 56.8% were male with a mean age of 67 (standard deviation: 16). Most infections were bacterial pneumonias (73.7%). Of the total cases, 264 (53%) presented complications. Of the 498 cases, 351 strains were obtained, of which 145 (41.3%) belong to vaccinal serotypes (included in the PCV-13 vaccine) and 206 (58.7%) to non-vaccinal serotypes (not included in the PCV-13 vaccine). The percentage of IPD caused by vaccinal serotypes was lower in the second period (47.8% vs. 34.5%; p = 0.012). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]