In recent years, after various scandals, the role of auditors has been called into question, even casting doubt on whether their reports reliably reflect the true financial situation of the auditee, especially when this situation is not good. Normative changes in the way auditors have to rate certain questions provide a good opportunity to study this problem. These changes have acquired great relevance among the factors involved in studying audit quality. Thus, the present study analyzed the effect of the normative (...) change that took place in Spain in December 2010, related to opinions modified for going-concern uncertainties. Until that date, the auditor’s uncertainty about the company’s going-concern status led to a qualified opinion. However, under the new regulation, it became an opinion that included an explanatory paragraph stating the reasons for concern, which was considered less serious. In all, 152 small- and medium-sized enterprises that had begun bankruptcy proceedings were studied. Expert systems were used for their analysis, based on classification trees assembled through boosting and bagging. In addition, the logistic regression was used as baseline to compare previous methods. The main result obtained was that a change in the norm that catalogs the going-concern issue as less serious made auditors more likely to report this situation, thus questioning the audit quality. (shrink)

Introduction and ObjectiveThe early identification of depressive patients having a poor evolution, with frequent relapses and/or recurrences, is one of the priority challenges in this study of high prevalence mental disorders, and specifically in depression. So, this study aims to analyze the factors that may be associated with an increased risk of recurrence of major depression episodes in patients treated in primary care.MethodsA retrospective, descriptive study of cases-controls was proposed. The cases consisted of patients who had been diagnosed with major (...) depression and who had presented recurrences, in comparison with patients who had experienced a single major depression episode with no recurrence. The variables of the study are age at first episode; number of episodes; perception of severity of the depression episode suffered prior to recurrence; number of residual symptoms; physical and psychiatric comorbidity; history of anxiety disorders; family psychiatric history; high incidence of stressful life events ; and experiences of physical, psychological, or sexual abuse in childhood. The differences of the variables were compared between the case subjects and the control subjects, using the Mann–Whitney, chi-square, and Fisher’s U statistics. A multivariate analysis was performed.ResultsThe average age of those suffering more than one depressive episode is significantly older, and a higher percentage of subjects who have experienced more than one depressive episode have a history of anxiety disorders. In the multivariate analysis, the variables that obtained a significant value in the logistic regression analysis were age and having suffered sexual abuse during childhood.ConclusionThese indicators should be considered by primary care physicians when attending patients suffering from major depression. (shrink)

Major depression etiopathogenesis is related to a wide variety of genetics, demographic and psychosocial factors, as well as to environmental factors. The objective of this study is to analyze sociodemographic and environmental variables that are related to the prevalence of depression through correlation analysis and to develop a regression model that explains the behavior of this disease from an ecological perspective. This is an ecological, retrospective, cross-sectional study. The target population was 1,148,430 individuals over the age of 16 who were (...) registered in Aragon (Spain) during 2010, with electronic medical records in the community’s primary health care centers. The spatial unit was the Basic Health Area (BHA). The dependent variable was the diagnosis of Depression and the ecological independent variables were: Demographic variables (gender and age), population distribution, typology of the entity, population structure by sex and age, by nationality, by education, by work, by salary, by marital status, structure of the household by number of members, and state of the buildings. The results show moderate and positive correlations appear with higher rates of depression in areas having a higher femininity index, higher population density, areas with a higher unemployment rate and higher average salary. The results of the linear regression show that aging +75 and rural entities act as protective factors for depression, while urban areas and deficient buildings act as risk factors. In conclusion, the ecological methodology may be a useful tool which, together with the statistical epidemiological analysis, can help in the political decision making process. (shrink)

Las posibilidades que ofrece el desarrollo de la inteligencia artificial y el manejo de macro datos son ingentes. Sus aplicaciones se extienden también al ámbito sanitario en el que resulta difícil separar la práctica médica y el proceso creciente de digitalización. Sin embargo, no todo es luz en este nuevo universo algorítmico. Existe también otro lado apenas perceptible, más opaco, pero impregnado de brumas provenientes de los intereses y expectativas económicos de las grandes empresas multinacionales. De ahí la necesidad de (...) incidir en la protección de los datos personales sanitarios, así como en la salvaguarda de la privacidad del paciente; teniendo presente que la defensa de los derechos fundamentales constituye un instrumento inequívoco de limitación del poder, en este caso, tecnocientífico. (shrink)

El teólogo ortodoxo Olivier Clément reflexiona, con especial frescura y claridad, en la antropología cristiana a partir del dogma calcedoniano. El misterio de Cristo esclarece verdaderamente el misterio del hombre en una perspectiva donde la categoría persona es la clave de bóveda. En Jesucristo, Hijo de Dios hecho hombre, la persona humana es reconocida como misterio, ser de apertura y ofrecimiento a la vez que trascendente e inasible. La experiencia de religación y dependencia existencial, en definitiva de filiación, esclarece su (...) verdadera identidad logrando la máxima realización de la persona humana en la comunión divina que no anula su dignidad sino que la posibilita. Esto alumbra un nuevo método educativo y una nueva actitud vital basada en la libertad recibida como gracia y realizada en la ofrenda de sí por el amor. (shrink)