Bayesian assessment of times to diagnosis in breast cancer screening

Breast cancer is one of the diseases with the most profound impact on health in developed countries and mammography is the most popular method for detecting breast cancer at a very early stage. This paper focuses on the waiting period from a positive mammogram until a confirmatory diagnosis is carried out in hospital. Generalized linear mixed models are used to perform the statistical analysis, always within the Bayesian reasoning. Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms are applied for estimation by simulating the posterior distribution of the parameters and hyperparameters of the model through the free software WinBUGS.     

A proposal for handling ordinal categorical variables in co-inertia analysis

This paper is about the problem of the treatment of ordinal qualitative variables in co-inertia analysis. In the literature, there are different proposals based on the application of known statistical techniques to quantify ordinal variables. Here we propose to use a new procedure for the coding considering the empirical distributions of the variables involved in the analysis. We present an application to a real dataset, comparing the results obtained with the different kinds of quantification.     

Measuring inequality of opportunity through between-group inequality components

Opportunity egalitarians support rich-to-poor redistribution whenever this allows for the compensation of income disparities due to non-responsible choices (circumstances). In this paper we focus on the measurement of opportunity inequality within Roemer’s (Philos Public Aff 22:146–166, 1993) pragmatic theory where a disjoint and exhaustive partition rule is assumed such that individuals within the same population can be grouped depending on the sole circumstances. Given entropy-based, deprivation-based and welfaristic inequality decomposition procedures, we show that the between-group Gini component from Dagum’s decomposition is the only well known between-group inequality index satisfying the Pigou-Dalton principle of transfer as reformulated for opportunity egalitarianism.     

Developing green innovation performance by fostering of organizational knowledge and coopetitive relations

This study explores the links between knowledge base, relationship learning, and green innovation performance within a coopetitive framework. We posit that green innovation is directly influenced by a broad and deep knowledge base. We also hypothesize that the knowledge base–green innovation performance link is positively mediated by relationship learning (indirect effect). These hypotheses were empirically tested using consistent partial least squares path modeling. A sample of 112 firms from the Spanish automotive components manufacturing sector was used. The mediating effect of relationship learning on the knowledge base–green innovation performance link was observed to be positive and significant. Therefore, managers should build strong relations with stakeholders to assimilate, transfer, and adapt new knowledge and thus enhance green innovation performance.     

Innovation through tradition in the Italian coffee industry: an analysis of customers’ perceptions

The extant literature reveals how firms may innovate by exploiting past competencies and resources, hence proposing innovation through tradition as an emerging strategy to compete. Previous research largely demonstrates that the effectiveness of an innovation strategy is strictly dependent on the capability of firms to communicate the right message to their customers. Therefore, leveraging products’ attributes becomes fundamental to strategically position their commercial offerings in the minds of the target audience. Nevertheless, despite the well-known relevance of this issue, scant attention has been devoted to investigate the product attributes that consumer’s associate with innovation and with tradition when companies deploy strategies based on “innovation through tradition”. Accordingly, our study aims at covering this gap, by empirically analyzing the consumers’ perception of innovation and tradition in the Italian coffee industry through a positioning analysis. Our research allowed us to identify two sets of product attributes that consumers associate with innovation and tradition. The results show that in many cases the innovation-related and tradition-related attributes are strongly negatively correlated, but in some case the correlation is weak or close to zero. These attributes reveal that in some cases innovation and tradition can be combined in the perception of consumers, rather than representing opposite constructs. This result suggests that companies can effectively communicate the strategy of innovation through tradition to the consumers’ minds, but this must be done by choosing the right attributes.     

The Balanced Worth: A Procedure to Evaluate Performance in Terms of Ordered Attributes

There are many problems in the social sciences that refer to the evaluation of the relative performance of some populations when their members’ achievements are described by a distribution of outcomes over a set of ordered categories. A new method for the evaluation of this type of problems is presented here. That method, called balanced worth, offers a cardinal, complete and transitive evaluation that is based on the likelihood of getting better results. The evaluation of each society is based on the probability of obtaining better results with respect to the others. The balanced worth is a refinement of “the worth” (Herrero and Villar in PLoS ONE 8(12):e84784, 2013.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0084784) that overcomes its excessive sensitivity to the differences, due to the presence of ties. We also discuss how this method can be applied for the case of heterogeneous populations and show how it can be applied in different contexts. An empirical example, regarding life satisfaction in Spain is used to illustrate the working of this method.     

Prevalence analysis of urinary incontinence after radical prostatectomy and influential preoperative factors in a single institution

Aims: To assess prevalence of urinary incontinence (UI) after radical prostatectomy (RP) and to analyze which preoperative characteristics of the patients have influence on UI.

Methods: Between 2002 and 2012, 746 consecutive patients underwent RP for clinically localized prostate cancer. We defined UI according to International Continence Society (ICS) definition: “the complaint of any involuntary leakage of urine” after 12?months of recovery, international consultation on incontinence questionnaire (ICIQ-SF) and pads/day was collected too. Clinical features and magnetic resonance imaging measurements were assessed. A multivariable logistic regression model predicting incontinence were built-in after adjust by cofounding factors and bootstrapping.

Results: About 172 (23%) of the patients were classified as incontinent according to the ICS definition. The mean value of the ICIQ-SF was 10.87 (±4). 17.8% of patients use at least one pad/day, 11.9% use more than one pad/day. The preoperative factors independently influential in UI are: age [OR: 1.055; CI 95% (1.006–1.107), p?=?.028], urethral wall thickness [OR: 5.03; CI 95% (1.11–22.8), p?=?.036], history of transurethral resection of the prostate [OR: 6.13; CI 95% (1.86–20.18), p?=?.003] and membranous urethral length [OR: 0.173; CI 95% (0.046–0.64), p?=?.009]. The predictive accuracy of the model is 78.7% and the area under the curve (AUC) value 71.7%.

Conclusions: Urinary incontinence after radical prostatectomy has different prevalence depending on the definition. Age, prior transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP), membranous urethral length (MUL) and urethral wall thickness (UWT) were risk factors.     

The Long Road: Rural Youth,Farming and Agroecological Formación in Central America

Across the globe, the countryside faces the “generation problem”: Who will grow food when the current generation of aging small farmers and peasants disappears? A combination of objective and subjective factors effectively discourages young people from assuming the continuity of peasant and family farming, especially in countries that have experienced significant neoliberal dismantling of rural infrastructure and education. Rural social movements are increasingly building educational processes linked with small-scale, ecological farming in the hopes of reinforcing the development of identities and skills for peasant futures and cadre in the struggle for popular land reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty.