Process of Critical and Computational Thinking in the Learning of Mathematics in Secondary Education

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the ways of teaching and learning mathematics in high school, leading to the implementation of new teaching strategies aimed at achieving meaningful learning in the area of mathematics, with the mediation of digital technology and other pedagogical resources of the 21st century. The objective of this work is to analyze and explain the incidence of critical and computational thinking in the learning of mathematical concepts and procedures in secondary school students. The research approach is mixed, combining qualitative and quantitative sources of information and perspectives of analysis;the design is non -experimental;the data collection instruments are: Likert-type questionnaire and cognitive test;the data analysis is carried out by means of descriptive statistics. The results of the work show a sustained development of critical and computational thinking in the students during the mathematics learning activities, expressed in the fluency in the handling of concepts and logical procedures in problem solving;statistically, there is a correlation between the level of learning achieved and the development of critical and computational thinking of 0.545 and 0.823, respectively. It is concluded that the computational and critical thinking developed by secondary school students significantly influences learning and the development of mathematical competencies, with implications in the level of satisfaction with their academic and personal achievements.

Inhaled aprotinin reduces viral load in mild-to-moderate inpatients with SARS-CoV-2 infection

The objective of this work is to expand the information provided in the ATAC study, showing the viral load measurements by means of RT-qPCR in tracheobronchial samples from a group of patients with moderate COVID-19, before and after 5 days of standard treatment with aprotinin compared with standard treatment with placebo. The samples of the current study were rescued from participants of a multicentre, double-blind, parallel-arm, randomized phase III trial, performed in four Spanish hospitals with the same inclusion criteria at baseline. Viral load was compared between placebo group and aprotinin-treated group at two time points. At the pre-time (i.e. day 0 before treatment), no significant differences were observed between groups. However, at post-time (i.e. treatment day 5), viral load levels were significantly lower in the aprotinin-treated group. Additionally, a comparative analysis was performed between the placebo group and the aprotinin group. A significantly shorter treatment time was observed in the aprotinin-treated group (p = 0.032), as well as a greater decrease in viral load (p = 0.016). The remaining variables showed no differences between both groups.

Flexible teaching and learning of mathematics in rural secondary education

The covid-19 pandemic forced the implementation of new teaching and learning strategies, such as flexible teaching and the widespread use of digital technology. The objective of this work is to analyze the implications of flexible teaching of mathematics in the learning achievement of students in the fifth grade of secondary education, in the context of rural schools in the province of Huánuco 2021. The study is framed within a mixed approach, through a non-experimental design, with personalized monitoring of teaching-learning activities that were validated through a questionnaire of questions and evaluation applied to 36 students, interview of 5 students and 2 teachers. The results show that 72% of the students are satisfied with the flexible teaching received, and more than 67% had expected and outstanding achievement in the learning of the mathematical contents taught in a personalized way, a result that is corroborated with the answers obtained in the interview. It is concluded that flexible teaching is directly related to and has a positive influence on the mathematics learning process of students in the fifth grade of secondary school in rural areas. © GTE-Educational Technology Group, University of the Balearic Islands. All rights reserved.

Development of a spray disinfection mechanism for baths in homes in the city of Cuenca

The outbreak and spread of infectious and contagious diseases such as Covid-19, which is currently affecting the world population, especially Ecuador, highlights the inadequate handling of regulations regarding biosafety measures such as personal and object disinfection everyday use in a home. The objective of the research is to develop a mechanism that allows the continuous disinfection of a bathroom, through the application by spraying of disinfectant chemicals that are not harmful to health and thus guarantee a healthy home for the occupants, reducing the risk of contagion of diseases. intestinal and respiratory;and at the same time offering a comfortable method of disinfection. Methodologically, the sampling was carried out on surfaces of 6 houses of interest at the level of the home bathrooms in Cuenca - Ecuador, using swabs. Stuart medium was used to transport the samples. Bacterial identification was carried out using the semi-automatic RapID one method and conventional biochemical tests to determine the existence of pathogens. In addition to conducting a review of the state of the art for the selection of the best disinfectant and in turn the appropriate disinfection mechanism. Among the results obtained, the presence of pathogens is observed in the following percentages, 55% Escherichia coli, 18% Proteus mirabilis, 15% Enterococcus faecalis, 5% Klebsiella aerogenes, 5% Staphylococcus coagulase negative and 2.5% Morganella morganii in the different areas of the bathrooms where the samples were collected. The best disinfectant is determined to be quaternary ammonium used by means of a mist disinfection mechanism. The presence of microorganisms in areas that are used on a daily basis has consequences for the health of the inhabitants, for this reason, it is advisable to use quaternary ammonium to carry out the disinfection mechanism by nebulization, which is capable of eliminating 99.9% of these agents, guaranteeing a healthy environment without causing damage to its habitual occupants. © 2022 Author(s).

Topic Discovery About Economy During COVID-19 Pandemic from Spanish Tweets

Automatic topic discovery from natural language texts has been a challenging and widely studied problem. The ability to discover the topics present in a collection of text documents is essential for information systems. Topic discovery has been used to obtain a compact representation of documents for grouping, classification, and retrieval. Some tasks that can benefit from topic discovery: recommendation systems, tracking misinformation, writing summaries, and text clustering. However, topic discovery from Spanish texts has been somewhat neglected. For this reason, this work proposes analyzing the behavior of topic discovery tasks in texts in Spanish, specifically in tweets about the Mexican economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, under three different approaches. A comparison was conducted, achieving promising results because the topic coherence metric indicates coherent topics. The highest score of 1.22 was obtained using PLSA with 50 topics, concluding that the topics encompassed the study domain. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

A HIGH-THROUGHPUT MULTIPLEXED MICROFLUIDIC DEVICE FOR COVID-19 SEROLOGY ASSAYS

The need to develop high-throughput diagnostic platforms for infectious diseases has never been more evident than with the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 and the ensued COVID-19 pandemic. Microfluidics, in tandem with its multiplexing capabilities, high sensitivity, and potential for automation, provides a unique advantage towards the development of high-throughput serological diagnostic platforms. Here, we present a microfluidic device that detects IgG or IgM raised against four SARS-CoV-2 antigens (spike, S;S1 subunit, S1;the receptor-binding domain, RBD;and nucleocapsid, N) from 50 serum samples in parallel. We validated the platform with a cross-sectional cohort of 66 samples from confirmed COVID-19 patients and a pre-pandemic control of 34 serum samples collected in 2018. The analysis of both antibodies against all four viral antigens provided a sensitivity of 90.4% and a specificity of 94.1%, with both parameters increasing to 100% in late-stage samples (21-30 days after symptoms onset). We expect our device to open the door to massive serological testing, impacting diagnostics, vaccine development, and epidemiological understanding of COVID-19. © 2021 MicroTAS 2021 - 25th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences. All rights reserved.

The theory of multinational enterprises in the digital era: state-of-the-art and research priorities

Purpose Deglobalization and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have severely hindered multinational enterprise (MNE) investment. At the same time, digital technology is seriously challenging it with traditional production factor flows. Few studies have realized that the impact of digitalization is not limited to either transaction costs or the location-boundness of firm-specific advantages (FSAs), but extends to profound changes in the fundamental essence of MNEs. There is still limited understanding of this body of knowledge as a whole, including how its subtopics are interrelated. This study took the production factor change perspective to review MNE theory in the digital era. Therefore, this study aims to identify any upcoming and undeveloped themes in order to provide a platform suited to direct future research. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a summary and a review of 151 articles published between 2007 and 2020. Such review was conducted to systematically explain the connotations and influential mechanisms of digital empowerment on MNE theory. This was achieved by using the CiteSpace citation visualization tool to build a keyword co-occurrence network. Findings The research findings pertain to how digitalization expands, breaks through, and even reshapes traditional MNE theory from four distinctive angles: the influential factors of internationalization, the process of internationalization, competitive advantage, and location choice. The findings are followed by the presentation of future research directions. Originality/value This paper presents an examination of MNE theory in the digital era from the perspective of production factor change. In doing so, it identifies significant theoretical innovation opportunities for future scholarly research priorities.

Proposal of a Model for the Analysis of the State of the Use of ICT in Education Applied to Technological Institutes of Higher Education

The inclusion of information and communication technologies in education has become a priority for all educational models, particularly for higher education institutes that have observed the need to integrate these technologies in the classroom. However, to guarantee educational quality and learning, establishing a process that allows the identification of the response of the students towards its use is necessary. For this purpose, there are several works that address the issue and have determined the functionality of these technologies, but each environment is different, and this is recognized by the higher education institutes of Ecuador that have limited economic, technological, and academic resources. This work seeks to create a method that allows the needs and doubts of students about the use of educational technologies in the classroom to be established without affecting their academic performance. To perform this, a process has been designed that identifies learning needs through the validation of data obtained from surveys and a comparison of two groups of students, in which one group makes use of technologies in the classroom and the other group uses a model of traditional education. By obtaining the results of the analysis, the method determines the impact of technology on learning.

Assessing the implementation of governance best practices by Latin American ports

In this paper, a semi-structured interview approach is used to assess governance and institutionalist practices promoted among successful port systems worldwide, in Latin American ports. The aim is to provide recommendations that would allow Latin American ports to reach high performance scores through governance practices, and face the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, fostering a more resilient port ecosystem. A three-stage methodological framework, composed of six steps, is proposed. In the first stage, semi-structured interviews were carried out, with a total of 178 participants, to assess the state of implementation of governance practices in 24 Latin American ports. These practices were identified from a literature review and are promoted among successful port systems worldwide. In a second stage, the relationship between governance practices in ports and their performance was analyzed, aiming to identify those governance and institutionalist strategies that are most extensively used by the best performing ports. Finally, in a third stage, we provide recommendations that would allow Latin American ports to reach high performance scores through improved governance practices. The results indicate that digitalization and coordination among the stakeholders of the port logistics community are two of the most cited governance practices in the best performing Latin American ports. This paper contributes to the theory of port governance in Latin America, by empirically relating and identifying those governance practices which contribute to port performance. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on maternal anxiety during pregnancy: A prevalence study.

Aim: To assess the impact of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on the level of anxiety in low-risk pregnant women. Material and method: Epidemiological, descriptive, prevalence study. A total of 74 patients who underwent low risk antenatal controls during the state of alarm because of COVID-19, were included. They filled in the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale and a specific document about the pandemic. Clinical histories and different variables of clinical interest were reviewed and compiled, respectively. Results: Mean age was 34.05 years with average amenorrhoea of 28.17 weeks. A total of 77% of the sample presented symptoms and signs compatible with anxiety. Of these, 44.6% and 32.4% presented minor and major anxiety, respectively. Concern over the time of the birth and postpartum and fear of being at greater risk because of possible infection was present in 95.9% and 94.6% of the sample, respectively. A total of 93.2% of the sample was afraid of intrauterine virus transmission; 94.5% admitted fear over the neonatal consequences of infection. Conclusions: The pregnant women assessed had three times more anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. This incidence is independent of most study variables.

Objetivo: Evaluar el impacto de la pandemia del coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 en el nivel de ansiedad en mujeres embarazadas de bajo riesgo. Material y método: Estudio epidemiológico, descriptivo, de prevalencia. Se incluyeron un total de 74 pacientes que se sometieron a controles prenatales de bajo riesgo durante el estado de alarma por COVID-19. Completaron la escala de calificación de ansiedad de Hamilton y un documento específico sobre la pandemia. Se revisaron y recopilaron historias clínicas y diferentes variables de interés clínico, respectivamente. Resultados: La edad promedio fue de 34,05 años con amenorrea promedio de 28,17 semanas. El 77% de la muestra presentó síntomas y signos compatibles con la ansiedad. De estos, el 44,6 y el 32,4% presentaron ansiedad menor y mayor, respectivamente. La preocupación por el momento del parto y el puerperio y el temor de presentar mayor riesgo por una posible infección estuvieron presentes en el 95,9 y 94,6% de la muestra, respectivamente. El 93,2% de la muestra temía una posible transmisión del virus intrauterino; el 94,5% admitió tener miedo a las consecuencias neonatales tras una posible infección. Conclusiones: Las embarazadas evaluadas tenían tres veces más ansiedad durante la pandemia de COVID-19. Esta incidencia es independiente de la mayoría de las variables de estudio.

Pharmacotherapeutic follow-up of a diabetic patient during the pandemic in the community pharmacy: clinical case

The COVID-19 pandemic has been specially damaging for the monitoring of diabetic patients. During the pandemic, pharmacies, which have traditionally been the reference health-care centers for these patients, have been heavily involved in student-training, to respond to the increasingly demand of qualified healthcare professionals. During the training period, a 75-aged chronic patient with abdominal symptomatology and abnormally high values of glycosylated haemoglobin and triglycerides (7,7% and 309 mg/dl) was detected. The possible cause of the abdominal symptomatology was identified as a drug interaction between metformin and OCT1 transporters inhibitors. In addition, an adverse effect of prednisone was detected because of its hyperglycaemic effect, and a potential interaction between repaglinide and clopidogrel through CYP2C8 has been identified as a possible contributor to this condition. The negative drug results were notified to the physician in a written report. The doctor have accepted the pharmaceutical intervention and the drug treatment was modified. Three months later, the patient's values of glycosylated haemoglobin and triglycerides dropped to 6,8% and 122mg/dL respectively, both values within the optimum range, and the abdominal symptomatology highly decreased. To sum up, this case provides a clear example of how medication review with follow-up is an efficient tool to detect efficacy and security problems, and for improving the monitoring of chronic patients in collaboration with their physician.

Spontaneous Intracerebral Hemorrhage in severe Covid-19 patients: Report of two cases

The respiratory system is mainly affected by the SARS-CoV-2 infection, producing a severe acute respiratory syndrome known as COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019), patients with severe disease usually develop multiorgan failure;among these we can focus on the nervous system, due to its potential neurotropism. Recent clinical data reveal that patients may manifest symptoms such as anosmia, dysgeusia, impaired consciousness, headache, seizures, and cerebrovascular disease (CVD). We describe two physically active male patients with complicated SARS-CoV-2 infection without significant comorbidities related to the development of intracranial hemorrhage, nor a history of head trauma or documented anatomic malformations. Both were admitted by the emergency department and during their stay in the ICU they developed intracranial hemorrhage diagnosed by computed tomography. The paraclinical findings in the two cases were compatible with a prothrombotic state as possible etiologies of bleeding in both.

Characterization of children diagnosed with covid-19 in a province in the northern sierra of peru

Introduction: Children population has low morbidity and mortality by COVID-19;however, children infected with SARS-CoV-2 are on the rise and may need to be characterized according to their various presentation variables. Objective: Examine the social, clinical characteristics, epidemiological conditions and clinical picture of children diagnosed with COVID-19. Methods: Retrospective descriptive study, with a sample of 88 children under 12 years old. The database of the hospital´s epidemiology office authorized for the registration of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Chota province, Peru, was reviewed. Authorization was obtained from the institution's management to use the data exclusively for research purposes. The analysis period was from April 14, 2020 (zero case in the province) to January 28, 2021. Results: In the sample 51.1% were women, the average age was 5.6 years;10.2% were hospitalized, 83% were put in isolation, and 98.9% had a satisfactory recovery. The main manifestations in children were: cough, 26.1%;fever, 23.9% and headache, 19.3%. Epidemiological conditions detected were: 1.4% traveled in the last two weeks;47.7% had intradomyciliary contagion, and 67% were asymptomatic. No children were reported deceased, intubated, ventilated or with pneumonia. Conclusions: Children are just as susceptible to COVID-19 as other people;they have less severe clinical pictures that occur mainly with cough, fever, headache and general discomfort;they show a more favorable evolution and high prevalence of asymptomatic and intradomyciliary contagions.

COVID-19 and micro-enterprises: an study in Bogotá-Colombia

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a global crisis and forced conjuncture research exercises. In Colombia, microenterprises make up more than 90% of the business fabric and have a survival rate of less than 30%. This qualitative study explores how a group of micro-enterprises in the industrial sector faced the challenges of COVID-19. The field work was carried out by applying a semi-structural interview to a sample of 50 microenterprises formalized through the commercial register. The data was processed in the Nvivo software with four categories of analysis: impacts, government support, strategies to face the crisis and future decisions. The results show how COVID-19 made visible a dilemma that seemed obsolete: the tension between solidarity and flexibility in the world of work. In addition, there was evidence of a trend towards basic digital transformation and adjustment in business models with strong financial and operating restrictions due to insufficient state support. It is concluded that the microenterprise sector has particular management logics that are very susceptible to socioeconomic situations, and that they are expressed in tensions between formality and informality. © 2022, Universidad del Zulia. All rights reserved.

Experience of a Private Hospital in the Treatment of COVID-19 Pneumonia in Veracruz, Mexico

Background. Large mortality rates have been reported in the Mexican public health system, however in the experiences of private hospitals that have resources and infrastructure this is lower compared to the national average. Methods. Descriptive and retrospective study. Adult patients treated for pneumonia due COVID-19 from April to December 2020 are entered into the study. Its general characteristics such as gender and age, comorbidities, influenza vaccination history, clinical characterization, laboratory and tomographic diagnosis of sars cov2 pneumonia are studied, as well as the drug and oxygen therapy treatments received and finally, its evolution and clinical outcome. Results. 132 patients were studied, of which 51% were female. The main age groups affected were 65 and over (43.9%), 50-59 years (20.4%) and 25-44 years (16.6%). The main comorbidities found were: arterial hypertension (43.9%), Diabetes mellitus 2 (33.3%), heart disease (11.3%) and obesity (10.6%). 95.4% of the patients were not vaccinated against influenza. The main symptoms reported were: fever (92%), cough (87%), dyspnea (76%) and headache (52%). The diagnosis was confirmed with RT-PCR in 63%, reporting negative RT-PCR in 36%;the antigen test was positive in 1%. Regarding the findings of the chest computed tomography, CORADS 5 was reported in 30%, CORADS 6 in 3% and CORADS 4 in 20%. The main treatments used in patients with severe inflammatory pneumonia were: steroids (98%), enoxaparin (100%), tocilizumab (20%), baricitinib (60%), direct oral anticoagulants (10%), fibroquel (5%). 60% were treated with a combination of two or more drugs. The main oxygenation contributions were: 20% nasal tips - mask/reservoir, 60% high flow nasal cannula, 20% mechanical ventilation. In 95% the prone position was indicated. Regarding the clinical evolution, 65.1% were towards improvement, 17.4% died, 12.1% requested transfer to another unit and 5.3% requested voluntary discharge. Overall mortality was 17%. Conclusion. A hospital strategy that has the necessary resources and infrastructure as well as openness to the use of medication with emergency approvals for its use or off-label indications, can help limit morbidity and mortality in vulnerable populations and manifest risk factors such as Mexican population.