AbstractNowadays, scientific challenges usually require approaches that cross traditional boundaries between academic disciplines, driving many researchers towards interdisciplinarity. Despite its obvious importance, there is a lack of studies on how to quantify the influence of interdisciplinarity on the research impact, posing uncertainty in a proper evaluation for hiring and funding purposes. Here, we propose a method based on the analysis of bipartite interconnected multilayer networks of citations and disciplines, to assess scholars, institutions, and countries interdisciplinary importance. Using data about physics publications and US patents, we show that our method allows to reward, using a quantitative approach, scholars and institutions that have carried out interdisciplinary work and have had an impact in different scientific areas. The proposed method could be used by funding agencies, universities and scientific policy decision makers for hiring and funding purposes, and to complement existing methods to rank universities and countries.
We study how homophily of human physical interactions affects the impact of digital proximity tracing on the epidemic evolution. Analytical and numerical results show the existence of different dynamical regimes with respect to the mixing rate between adopters and nonadopters, revealing a rich phenomenology in terms of the reproduction number as well as the attack rate. We corroborate our findings with Monte Carlo simulations on different real contact networks. Our results indicate that depending on infectivity and adoption, mixing between adopters can be beneficial as well as detrimental for disease control. ; G.B. acknowledges financial support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 945413 and from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). B.S. acknowledges financial support from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 713679 and from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). A.A. acknowledges support by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Grants No. PGC2018-094754-B-C21 and No. FIS2015-71582-C2-1), Generalitat de Catalunya (Grants No. 2017SGR-896 and No. 2020PANDE00098), Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Grant No. 2019PFR-URV-B2-41), ICREA Academia, and the James S. McDonnell Foundation (Grant No. 220020325). We thank L. Arola-Fernández and A. Cardillo for helpful comments and suggestions. ; Peer Reviewed ; Postprint (author's final draft)
The emergence and promotion of cooperation are two of the main issues in evolutionary game theory, as cooperation is amenable to exploitation by defectors, which take advantage of cooperative individuals at no cost, dooming them to extinction. It has been recently shown that the existence of purely destructive agents (termed jokers) acting on the common enterprises (public goods games) can induce stable limit cycles among cooperation, defection, and destruction when infinite populations are considered. These cycles allow for time lapses in which cooperators represent a relevant fraction of the population, providing a mechanism for the emergence of cooperative states in nature and human societies. Here we study analytically and through agent-based simulations the dynamics generated by jokers in finite populations for several selection rules. Cycles appear in all cases studied, thus showing that the joker dynamics generically yields a robust cyclic behavior not restricted to infinite populations. We also compute the average time in which the population consists mostly of just one strategy and compare the results with numerical simulations. ; Financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Spain) under Projects No. FIS2009-13730-C02-02 (A.A.) and No. FIS2009-13370-C02-01 (J.C. and R.J.R.), MOSAICO, PRODIEVO, and Complexity-NET RESINEE (J.A.C.); from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics and the government of Catalonia (A.A.); from the Generalitat de Catalunya under Projects No. 2009SGR0838 (A.A.) and No. 2009SGR0164 (J.C. and R.J.R.); and from Comunidad de Madrid under Project MODELICO-CM (J.A.C.) is appreciated. R.J.R. acknowledges the financial support of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Spanish government.
Understanding the emergence of cooperation is a central issue in evolutionary game theory. The hardest setup for the attainment of cooperation in a population of individuals is the Public Goods game in which cooperative agents generate a common good at their own expenses, while defectors "free-ride" this good. Eventually this causes the exhaustion of the good, a situation which is bad for everybody. Previous results have shown that introducing reputation, allowing for volunteer participation, punishing defectors, rewarding cooperators or structuring agents, can enhance cooperation. Here we present a model which shows how the introduction of rare, malicious agents &- that we term jokers &- performing just destructive actions on the other agents induce bursts of cooperation. The appearance of jokers promotes a rock-paper-scissors dynamics, where jokers outbeat defectors and cooperators outperform jokers, which are subsequently invaded by defectors. Thus, paradoxically, the existence of destructive agents acting indiscriminately promotes cooperation. ; Financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologíıa (Spain) under projects FIS2009-13730-C02-02 (A.A.), FIS2009-13370-C02-01 (J.C. and R.J.R.) and MOSAICO (J.A.C.); from the Director, Office of Science, Computational and Technology Research, U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 (A.A.); from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics and of the Government of Catalonia (A.A.); from the Generalitat de Catalunya under project 2009SGR0838 (A.A.) 2009SGR0164 (J.C. and R.J.R.) and from Comunidad de Madrid under project MODELICO-CM (J.A.C.). R.J.R. acknowledges the financial support of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (PIF grant) and the Spanish government (FPU grant).
Background: Baveno VI and expanded Baveno VI criteria have been recommended to circumvent the need for endoscopy screening in patients with a very low probability of varices needing treatment (VNT). Aim: To validate these criteria in a Latin American population. Methods: The ability of Baveno VI criteria (liver stiffness measurement (LSM) 150 × 103/μL) and expanded Baveno VI criteria (LSM 110 × 103/μL) to exclude the presence of VNT was tested in a prospectively recruited cohort of patients with Child-Pugh A liver cirrhosis and with no previous variceal haemorrhage who attended the liver clinics of three major hospitals in Chile. Results: Three hundred patients were included. The median (IQR) age was 61 [18-86] years, median MELD was 8.0 (6-17), median LSM was 17.2 (10.2-77) kPa and median platelet count was 137 (23-464) × 103 /μL. The main aetiology was non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (67.3%). VNT were present in 18% of patients. The Baveno VI criteria had a sensitivity of 98.1% and a specificity of 38.2%, potentially sparing 31.3% of upper endoscopies with a very low risk of missing VNT (1.1%). The expanded Baveno VI criteria had a sensitivity of 90.7% and a specificity of 61%, potentially sparing 51.3% of upper endoscopies with a risk of missing VNT of 3.6%. Both criteria were independently associated with the absence of VNT. Conclusion: We validated the Baveno VI and expanded Baveno VI criteria in Chilean population, potentially sparing 31.3% and 51.3% of endoscopies, respectively, with a very low risk of missing VNT. Fondecyt 1191183 ; Chilean government through Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cientifico y Tecnologico (FONDECYT) 1119145 1200227 1191183 Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CONICYT) CONICYT PIA/BASAL CONICYT PIA/Basal PFB12
Abstract While significant effort has been devoted to understand the role of intraurban characteristics on sustainability and growth, much remains to be understood about the effect of interurban interactions and the role cities have in determining each other's urban welfare. Here we consider a global mobility network of population flows between cities as a proxy for the communication between these regions, and analyze how it correlates with socioeconomic indicators. We use several measures of centrality to rank cities according to their importance in the mobility network, finding PageRank to be the most effective measure for reflecting these prosperity indicators. Our analysis reveals that the characterization of the welfare of cities based on mobility information hinges on their corresponding development stage. Namely, while network-based predictions of welfare correlate well with economic indicators in mature cities, for developing urban areas additional information about the prosperity of their mobility neighborhood is needed. We develop a simple generative model for the allocation of population flows out of a city that balances the costs and benefits of interaction with other cities that are successful, finding that it provides a strong fit to the flows observed in the global mobility network and highlights the differences in flow patterns between developed and developing urban regions. Our results hint towards the importance of leveraging interurban connections in service of urban development and welfare.
While Digital contact tracing (DCT) has been argued to be a valuable complement to manual tracing in the containment of COVID-19, no empirical evidence of its effectiveness is available to date. Here, we report the results of a 4-week population-based controlled experiment that took place in La Gomera (Canary Islands, Spain) between June and July 2020, where we assessed the epidemiological impact of the Spanish DCT app Radar Covid. After a substantial communication campaign, we estimate that at least 33% of the population adopted the technology and further showed relatively high adherence and compliance as well as a quick turnaround time. The app detects about 6.3 close-contacts per primary simulated infection, a significant percentage being contacts with strangers, although the spontaneous follow-up rate of these notified cases is low. Overall, these results provide experimental evidence of the potential usefulness of DCT during an epidemic outbreak in a real population. ; This work was funded by the Secretary of State of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Government of Spain. We thank Government of Spain, Gobierno de Canarias, INDRA, CCN, Fundación ONCE and the EU e-health Network for continuous support. We also thank Elisa Molino, Isabel Zanforlin, Alberto Ricci (Apple) and María Álvarez, Julián Toledo, Marcel Pinto (Google), Jorge García Vidal, Fernando Cucchietti, Josep Martorell and Mateo Valero (BSC). This work was made possible thanks to the incredible collaboration and engagement of the citizens of San Sebastián de la Gomera, Canary Islands (Spain). We also thank the DP3T community for helpful discussions. AA acknowledges financial support from Spanish MINECO (grant PGC2018-094754-B-C21), Generalitat de Catalunya (grant No. 2017SGR-896), and the James S. McDonnell Foundation (grant #220020325). LL acknowledges funding by EPSRC EC Fellowship EP/P01660X/1 and a QMUL COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant. JSM acknowledges funding by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (grant #759903). ; Peer reviewed
La pandemia de COVID-19 ha afectado de manera particularmente intensa a España, pese a su nivel de desarrollo y la elogiada solidez de su Sistema Nacional de Salud. Para comprender qué ha pasado e identificar cómo mejorar la respuesta creemos imprescindible una evaluación independiente multidisciplinaria de la esfera sanitaria, política y socioeconómica. En este trabajo proponemos objetivos, principios, metodología y dimensiones a evaluar, además de esbozar el tipo de resultados y conclusiones esperadas. Nos inspiramos en los requerimientos formulados por el panel independiente de la Organización Mundial de la Salud y en las experiencias evaluativas en otros países, y detallamos la propuesta de aspectos multidimensionales que deben valorarse. La idea es comprender aspectos clave en los ámbitos estudiados y su margen de mejora en lo relativo a preparación, gobernanza, marco normativo, estructuras del Sistema Nacional de Salud (atención primaria, hospitalaria y de salud pública), sector de educación, esquemas de protección social, minimización del impacto económico, y marco y reformas en el ámbito laboral para una sociedad más resiliente. En definitiva, buscamos que este ejercicio sirva no solo para el presente, sino también para que en el futuro estemos mejor preparados y con más ágil capacidad de recuperación ante las amenazas pandémicas que puedan surgir. ; The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Spain particularly hard, despite being a country with a developed economy and being praised for the robustness of its national health system. In order to understand what happened and to identify how to improve the response, we believe that an independent multi-disciplinary evaluation of the health, political and socio-economic spheres is essential. In this piece we propose objectives, principles, methodology and dimensions to be evaluated, as well as outlining the type of results and conclusions expected. Inspired by the requirements formulated by the WHO Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response and by experiences in other countries, we detail the multidimensional aspects to be evaluated. The goal is to understand key aspects in the studied areas and their scope for improvement in terms of preparedness, governance, regulatory framework, national health system structures (primary care, hospital, and public health), education sector, social protection schemes, minimization of economic impact, and labour framework and reforms for a more resilient society. We seek to ensure that this exercise serves not only at present, but also that in the future we are better prepared and more agile in terms of our ability to recover from any pandemic threats that may arise. ; Ayuda referencia: PI 18/01937 del Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria- Instituto de Salud Carlos III, España, con cofinanciación de Fondos FEDER.
A resurgence of COVID-19 infections is occurring in Spain, with some of the worst figures in Europe. In August, 2020, we urged the Spanish Central Government and regional governments to independently evaluate their COVID-19 response to identify areas where public health and the health and social care system need to be improved.
