Background: There is no treatment proven effective against COVID-19. Several drugs with in vitro potential against SARS-CoV-2 virus have been proposed. Hydroxychloroquine has in vitro anti-viral and immunomodulatory activity, but there is no current clinical evidence of its effectiveness changing the outcome of the disease. Methods: We enrolled all 18-85 years old inpatients from Central Defense Hospital “Gómez Ulla”, Madrid, Spain, who were hospitalised for COVID-19 and had a definitive outcome (dead or discharged). We used a statistical survival analysis to detect treatment differences associated with in-hospital death. Results: We analysed first 220 medical records. 166 patients met the inclusion criteria. 48,8 % of patients not treated with HCQ died, 22% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine (p=0,002). According to clinical picture at admission, hydroxychloroquine increased the mean cumulative survival in all groups from 1,4 to 1,8 times. This difference was statistically significant in the mild group. Conclusions: in a cohort of 166 patients from 18 to 85 years hospitalised with COVID-19, hydroxychloroquine treatment with 800mg added loading dose increased survival when patients were admitted in early stages of the disease. There was a non-statistically significant trend towards survival in all groups, which will have to be clarified in subsequent studies.

Retama monosperma (L.) Boiss is a coastal shrub growing on sandy soils in the SW of the Iberian Peninsula and in the NW of Morocco. Although a native species, it has been considered to show an invasive behaviour. Tolerance of R. monosperma to salinity-one of the most limiting factors of coastal systems-was assessed as an eventual explanation to its invasive character.A glasshouse experiment, where young plants were irrigated with different NaCl concentrations (5 to 600 mM), was designed. R. monosperma physiological performance was examined by measuring gas exchange, quantum yield, and water potential, at 7, 30, and 60 days after reaching the assigned NaCl concentration. At the end of the experiment, after measuring free proline content in cladodes, plants were harvested, separated in stems, roots, and root nodules, and weighted and Na + content was measured in roots and cladodes.Although plants survived to high NaCl concentrations, increasing levels of salinity resulted in a progressive reduction in photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance and water potential, and also in a progressive increase in proline and Na + content. Roots accumulated more Na + than cladodes in all situations. Biomass allocation pattern was modified by the NaCl levels.The high tolerance of R. monosperma to a continued exposure to salinity could be one of the factors explaining its high expansion rate in coastal areas.

In this article, we analyze branching angles of the basal dendrites of pyramidal neurons of layers III and V of the human temporal cortex. For this, we use a novel probability directional statistical distribution called truncated von Mises distribution that is able to describe more accurately the dendritic-branching angles than the previous proposals. Then, we perform comparative studies using this statistical method to determine similarities and/or differences between branches and branching angles that belong to different cortical layers and regions. Using this methodology, we found that common design principles exist and govern the patterns found in the different branches that compose the basal dendrites of human pyramidal cells of the temporal cortex. However, particular differences were found between supra and infragranular cells. Furthermore, we compared the branching angles of human layer III pyramidal neurons with data obtained in the previous studies in layer III of both the rat somatosensory cortex and of several cortical areas of the mouse. Finally, we study the branching angle differences between the humans that compose our data.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00429-016-1311-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

In this paper, we tackle the problem of random forests for regression expressed as weighted sums of datapoints. We study the theoretical behavior of k-potential nearest neighbors (k-PNNs) under bagging and obtain an upper bound on the weights of a datapoint for random forests with any type of splitting criterion, provided that we use unpruned trees that stop growing only when there are k or less datapoints at their leaves. Moreover, we use the previous bound together with the concept of b-terms (i.e., bootstrap terms) introduced in this paper, to derive the explicit expression of weights for datapoints in a random (k-PNNs) selection setting, a datapoint selection strategy that we also introduce and to build a framework to derive other bagged estimators using a similar procedure. Finally, we derive from our framework the explicit expression of weights of a regression estimate equivalent to a random forest regression estimate with the random splitting criterion and demonstrate its equivalence both theoretically and practically.

In this article we study the univariate and bivariate truncated von Mises distribution, as a generalization of the von Mises distribution (Jupp and Mardia (1989)), (Mardia and Jupp (2000)). This implies the addition of two or four new truncation parameters in the univariate and, bivariate cases, respectively. The results include the definition, properties of the distribution and maximum likelihood estimators for the univariate and bivariate cases. Additionally, the analysis of the bivariate case shows how the conditional distribution is a truncated von Mises distribution, whereas the marginal distribution that generalizes the distribution introduced in Singh (2002). From the viewpoint of applications, we test the distribution with simulated data, as well as with data regarding leaf inclination angles (Bowyer and Danson. (2005)) and dihedral angles in protein chains (Murzin AG (1995)).This research aims to assert this probability distribution as a potential option for modelling or simulating any kind of phenomena where circular distributions are applicable.