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The rise of the constitutional protection of future generations
No full textTreball de Fi de Màster: Màster Avançat en Ciències Jurídiques. Curs 2024-2025Tutor: Víctor Ferreres ComellaPrior to the visible impacts of the climate crisis, societal attention was largely fixed on the present, with the future remaining silent and overlooked. Yet, beginning in the early 2000s, the increasing credibility of climate science began to move concern for future generations from moral discourse to a legal and judicial one, particularly evident in climate litigation. Over time, debates have unfolded 2 around the rights, interests, and legal status of future generations, gradually shaping and clarifying their position within the legal framework
Pathway to effective treatment for common mental and substance use disorders in the World Mental Health Surveys: Perceived need for treatment
No full textBackground: Perceived need for treatment is a first step along the pathway to effective mental health treatment. Perceived need encompasses a person's recognition that they have a problem and their belief that professional help is needed to manage the problem. These two components could have different predictors. Methods: Respondents aged 18+ years with 12-month mental disorders from 25 representative household surveys in 21 countries in the World Mental Health Survey Initiative (n = 12,508). All surveys included questions about perceived need; 16 surveys (13 countries) included additional questions about respondents' main reason for perceived need-problem recognition or perceived inability to manage without professional help (n = 9814). Associations of three sets of predictors (disorder, socio-demographics, past treatment) with perceived need and its components were examined using Poisson regression models. Results: Across the 16 surveys with additional questions, 42.4% of respondents with a 12-month mental disorder reported perceived need for treatment. In separate multivariable models for each predictor set: (1) Most disorder types (except alcohol use disorder, specific phobia), disorder severity, and number of disorders were associated with perceived need and both of its components; (2) Sociodemographic factors tended to differentially predict either problem recognition (females, 30-59 years, disabled/unemployed) or need for professional help (females, homemakers, disabled/unemployed, public insurance); (3) Past treatment factors (type of professional, psychotherapy, helpful or unhelpful treatment) were associated with perceived need and both components, except number of past professionals differentially predicted problem recognition. In a consolidated model: employment and insurance became non-significant; type and number of past professionals seen became more important; helpful past treatment predicted greater need for professional help while unhelpful treatment predicted lower problem recognition. Problem recognition was the more important component in determining perceived need for some groups (e.g., severe disorder, people who consulted non-mental health professionals). Conclusions: Greater clinical need is a key determinant of perceived need for treatment. Findings suggest a need for strategies to address low perceived need (e.g., in males, older people, alcohol use disorders) and lower endorsement of professional treatment in some groups, and to improve patient's treatment experiences which are important enablers of future help-seeking
Broadcasting in random recursive dags
No full textA uniform k-dag generalizes the uniform random recursive tree by picking k parents uniformly at random from the existing nodes. It starts with k "roots". Each of the k roots is assigned a bit. These bits are propagated by a noisy channel. The parents' bits are flipped with probability p, and a majority vote is taken. When all nodes have received their bits, the k-dag is shown without identifying the roots. The goal is to estimate the majority bit among the roots. We identify the threshold for p as a function of k below which the majority rule among all nodes yields an error c + o(1) with c < 1/2. Above the threshold the majority rule errs with probability 1/2 + o(1).Simon Briend acknowledges the support of Région Ile de France. Gábor Lugosi acknowledges the support of Ayudas Fundación BBVA a Proyectos de Investigación Científica 2021 and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness grant PID2022-138268NB-I00, financed by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, FSE+MTM2015-67304-P, and FEDER, EU
Dietary selenium deficiency accelerates the onset of aging-related gut microbial changes in aged telomere-humanized mice, with Akkermansia muciniphila being the most prominent and alleviating selenium deficiency-induced Type 2 Diabetes
No full textPrevious studies have shown that dietary selenium (Se) deficiency in mice reshapes gut microbiota, exacerbates healthspan deterioration (e.g., type 2 diabetes), and paradoxically activates beneficial longevity pathways. This study demonstrated that dietary Se deficiency accelerated many age-related gut microbial changes in aged telomere-humanized C57BL/6J diabetic mice in a sexually dimorphic manner, with Akkermansia muciniphila showing the greatest enrichment in males. However, dietary Se deficiency did not enrich A. muciniphila in mature or middle-aged male C57BL/6J wild-type mice. Oral gavage of A. muciniphila alleviated Se deficiency-induced type 2 diabetes-like symptoms, reversed mucosal barrier dysfunction and gut inflammation, and resulted in a trend of symbiotic and competitive suppression changes in certain gut bacteria in mature wild-type mice under conventional conditions. The beneficial effects of A. muciniphila appeared to be independent of selenoproteins sensitive to dietary Se deficiency, such as GPX1, SELENOH, and SELENOW, in the liver and muscle. Altogether, these results show that dietary Se deficiency accelerates age-related A. muciniphila enrichment specifically in aged male mice with severe insulin resistance and pancreatic senescence, indicating a potential hormetic response to Se deficiency through reshaped gut microbiota, which alleviates hyperglycemia and partially compensates for healthspan decline
Detection of anthropogenic noise pollution as a possible chronic stressor in Antarctic Specially Protected Area N°150, Ardley Island
No full textAnthropogenic noise pollution is emerging as an important environmental stressor with the potential effect of disrupting natural ecosystems, since many taxa rely on acoustic signals for social interaction and communication. Antarctic wildlife is increasingly experiencing the impact of growing human presence on the continent, especially near populated areas such as research stations. Until now, most studies on the sound impact in Antarctica have focused on marine ecosystems, with a clear paucity of studies at the level of terrestrial environments. In this study, we analyze the presence of a specific anthropogenic sound source, a power generator, in the soundscape of the Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) N°150, Ardley Island. We used Audiomoth recorders to hourly monitor the soundscape in Ardley Island and create a simple yet effective detection method based on spectral features of the source. We cross-validate the detection algorithm with human perception classification of the source presence in the recordings, obtaining a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.61 between the two methods. Further, we relate the detection with wind velocity and direction, concluding that under certain meteorological conditions, the source can be clearly heard from Ardley. Our results suggest that the soundscape of Ardley Island is altered by the near presence of an anthropogenic noise source which could represent an impact on animal life in the ASPA. We consider this kind of study to be relevant in bringing awareness of noise pollution in Antarctic ecosystems and improving management plans in the ASPAs
Enhancing neural audio fingerprint robustness to audio degradation for music identification
No full textComunicació presentada al 26th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR 2025), celebrada a Daejeon (Korea) del 21 al 25 de setembre del 2025Audio fingerprinting (AFP) allows the identification of unknown audio content by extracting compact representations, termed audio fingerprints, that are designed to remain robust against common audio degradations. Neural AFP methods often employ metric learning, where representation quality is influenced by the nature of the supervision and the utilized loss function. However, recent work unrealistically simulates real-life audio degradation during training, resulting in sub-optimal supervision. Additionally, although several modern metric learning approaches have been proposed, current neural AFP methods continue to rely on the NT‑Xent loss without exploring the recent advances or classical alternatives. In this work, we propose a series of best practices to enhance the self-supervision by leveraging musical signal properties and realistic room acoustics. We then present the first systematic evaluation of various metric learning approaches in the context of AFP, demonstrating that a self‑supervised adaptation of the triplet loss yields superior performance. Our results also reveal that training with multiple positive samples per anchor has critically different effects across loss functions. Our approach is built upon these insights and achieves state-of-the-art performance on both a large, synthetically degraded dataset and a real-world dataset recorded using microphones in diverse music venues.This work was supported by the pre-doctoral program AGAUR-FI ajuts (2024 FI-3 00065) Joan Oró, funded by the Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca of the Departament de Recerca i Universitats of the Generalitat de Catalunya; and by the Cátedras ENIA program “IA y Música: Cátedra en Inteligencia Artificial y Música” (TSI-100929-2023-1), funded by the Secretaría de Estado de Digitalización e Inteligencia Artificial and the European Union Next Generation EU.
This work was also part of the project TROBA Technologies for the recognition of musical works in the era of dynamic generation of audio content (ACE014/20/000051), within the call Nuclis d’R+D 2024, with the support of ACCIÓ (Agency for Business Competitiveness, Government of Catalonia)
Foreign aid, FDI and the personalization of power in autocracies
No full textData de publicació electrònica: 21-03-2025Supplementary materials files: online appendix; replication data.This article examines the relationship between foreign aid and foreign direct investment (FDI) and the degree of personalism in dictatorships. We contend that aid leads to higher personalism since it is a windfall that accrues to the government and does not require cooperation from elites to obtain it. Contrarily, we posit that FDI is linked to lower levels of personalism because it reshapes elites' incentives and influence as they may acquire new preferences, connections, and exit options, thus constraining dictators. Using data on Official Development Assistance (ODA) and FDI, and a latent index of personalism in autocracies, we find no robust evidence that ODA or FDI are correlated with personalism, but have some effect on some of the index's components
Institutional capacities and urban management: Barcelona and the COVID-19 crisis
No full textThe increasing systemic crisis presents substantial challenges for local governments, particularly in responding to urgent economic and social issues. This paper studies the key factors that promote effective public action in times of crisis, focusing on the role of institutional capacities. Specifically, it analyzes three critical institutional capacities: Analytical, Organizational Management, and Collaborative. The authors propose a system of indicators for assessing each of these capacities, providing a comprehensive framework for understanding their impact on crisis management. The model is tested through a detailed case study of how the municipality of Barcelona and its local economic development agency, Barcelona Activa, responded to the local economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The results highlight the positive influence of all three institutional capacities on the design, execution, and effectiveness of anti-crisis measures implemented by the local government. Furthermore, the analysis shows that while a fully deterministic relationship between institutional capacities and crisis management success cannot be conclusively established, the study suggests a significant potential causal relationship that warrants further investigation. These findings contribute to the broader field of urban governance by offering insights into the mechanisms through which local governments can enhance their resilience in the face of complex systemic crises
Soluble Aβ pathology predicts neurodegeneration and cognitive decline independently on p-tau in the earliest Alzheimer's continuum: Evidence across two independent cohorts
No full textIntroduction: Identifying the link between early Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathological changes and neurodegeneration in asymptomatic individuals may lead to the discovery of preventive strategies. We assessed longitudinal brain atrophy and cognitive decline as a function of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) AD biomarkers in two independent cohorts of cognitively unimpaired (CU) individuals. Methods: We used longitudinal voxel-based morphometry (VBM) in combination with hippocampal subfield segmentation. Changes in neuroimaging and cognitive variables were inspected using general linear models (GLMs) adjusting by age, sex, apolipoprotein E (APOE) status, follow-up time, and years of education. Results: In both cohorts, baseline CSF amyloid beta (Aβ) biomarkers significantly predicted medial temporal lobe (MTL) atrophy rates and episodic memory (EM) decline independently of CSF phosphorylated tau (p-tau). Discussion: Our data suggest that soluble Aβ dyshomeostasis triggers MTL longitudinal atrophy and EM decline independently of CSF p-tau. Our data underscore the need for secondary preventive strategies at the earliest stages of the AD pathological cascade. Highlights: We assessed brain atrophy and cognitive decline in asymptomatic individuals. Aβ biomarkers predicted MTL atrophy independently of p-tau. Our results underscore the importance of undertaking Alzheimer's preclinical trials.The research leading to these results has received funding from “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434), under agreement LCF/PR/GN17/50300004 and the Alzheimer's Association and an international anonymous charity foundation through the TriBEKa Imaging Platform project (TriBEKa-17-519007). Additional support has been received from the Universities and Research Secretariat, Ministry of Business and Knowledge of the Catalan Government under the grant no. 2021 SGR 00913. RC receives funding from MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, EU, through project PID2021-125433OA-100, and support from grant RYC2021-031128-I, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR
Digital twin integrating clinical, morphological and hemodynamic data to identify stroke risk factors
No full textStroke remains a leading global cause of mortality, with ischemic stroke as the most common subtype. Atrial fibrillation (AF) increases ischemic stroke risk due to thrombus formation in the left atrium (LA), particularly in the left atrial appendage (LAA). Traditional risk assessments, like the CHA2DS2-VASc score, focus on clinical factors but often overlook LA morphology and hemodynamics. Existing studies either use mechanistic models with limited cases or rely solely on clinical data, missing hemodynamic insights. This study integrates statistical and mechanistic models within a Digital Twin framework, using unsupervised Multiple Kernel Learning on 130 AF patients. Combining LA morphology, hemodynamics, and clinical data improved patient stratification, identifying three phenogroups. The highest-risk group exhibited larger atrial dimensions, complex LAA structures, and elevated B-type natriuretic peptide levels. This study underscores the potential of Digital Twin models in assessing thrombus risk, emphasizing the need for further research to refine stroke prediction models.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the grant agreements No 101016496 (SimCardioTest) and No 101136438 (GEMINI), as well as by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under the GENERALITAAT grant, (PID2022-143239OB-I00). GP’s contribution was supported by the ICREA Academia program