Adherencia terapéutica en pacientes frágiles institucionalizados.

La adherencia terapéutica incluye el seguimiento de una dieta, el estilo de vida o la toma de medicación, según las instrucciones médicas. En la actualidad se entiende como anciano frágil aquel que presenta mayor riesgo de morbilidad y mortalidad debido a la reducción de sus reservas funcionales. La adherencia a los tratamientos es necesaria para asegurar el bienestar de los pacientes ancianos y, en concreto, de aquellos que presentan fragilidad. El incumplimiento de las pautas sanitarias aumenta las complicaciones y los efectos adversos, provocando un aumento del gasto sanitario. Objetivo. Analizar la situación de la población frágil institucionalizada en un centro asistencial, con respecto a la adherencia terapéutica. Método. Para la evaluación y detección de la adherencia terapéutica en pacientes frágiles institucionalizados se realizó un estudio de campo, teniendo en cuenta criterios de inclusión y exclusión y analizando posteriormente los resultados de 7 cuestionarios diferentes. Resultados. Una vez que los pacientes son institucionalizados pierden el control total de su medicación, favoreciendo el siguiente sistema de retroalimentación: no adherencia al tratamiento ↔ dependencia ↔ fragilidad. Conclusión. La detección, prevención y una correcta actuación es determinante para proteger a los pacientes de posibles complicaciones asociadas al no cumplimiento. Es importante hacer a los mayores partícipes de su cuidado ya que, la no adherencia terapéutica implica un mayor riesgo de dependencia por parte del anciano mayor y, con ello, una menor calidad de vida y fragilidad.Grado en Enfermerí

Efecto de la transformación de sabanas a potreros sobre la emisión de metano generado por termitas (Orinoquía, Colombia)

Las sabanas de la altillanura plana de la Orinoquia se han visto sometidas en las últimas décadas a la transformación debido a prácticas agrícolas y agropecuarias como la siembra de monocultivos y pastos introducidos para ganadería intensiva y extensiva. Este fenómeno puede llegar a afectar el funcionamiento y comportamiento de organismos como las termitas, éstas son especies susceptibilidad a la transformación por la perturbación que se da en los suelos causando cambios en sus hábitos y metabolismo, logrando ser especies bio- indicadores de transformación. Las termitas a diferencia de otros insectos tienen la capacidad de digerir celulosa, digestión mediante la cual se produce metano, esta producción se ve alterada por los cambios de cobertura que implican cambios en la composición del suelo y oferta de alimento para las termitas. Este gas al ser liberado es emitido a la atmósfera, contribuyendo así con las concentraciones de gases de efecto invernadero y con el calentamiento global.The flat savannas of the altillanutra located on the Orinoquia, have undergo on the last decades a landscape transformation due to agricultural and livestock activities, mainly monoculture crops and pastures growth for cattle feeding on extensive and intensive practices. This phenomenon affects the population growth of living organisms such as termites which are considered bio-indicators due to their high sensitivity to soil modifications. The termites as opposed to other insects are capable of cellulose digestion producing methane that serves as a refrigerator to their own nests. This methane is latter released to the atmosphere increasing the green house gasses concentration.Ecólogo (a)Pregrad

Signal processing algorithms for digital hearing aids

Hearing loss is a problem that severely affects the speech communication and disqualify most hearing-impaired people from holding a normal life. Although the vast majority of hearing loss cases could be corrected by using hearing aids, however, only a scarce of hearing-impaired people who could be benefited from hearing aids purchase one. This irregular use of hearing aids arises from the existence of a problem that, to date, has not been solved effectively and comfortably: the automatic adaptation of the hearing aid to the changing acoustic environment that surrounds its user. There are two approaches aiming to comply with it. On the one hand, the "manual" approach, in which the user has to identify the acoustic situation and choose the adequate amplification program has been found to be very uncomfortable. The second approach requires to include an automatic program selection within the hearing aid. This latter approach is deemed very useful by most hearing aid users, even if its performance is not completely perfect. Although the necessity of the aforementioned sound classification system seems to be clear, its implementation is a very difficult matter. The development of an automatic sound classification system in a digital hearing aid is a challenging goal because of the inherent limitations of the Digital Signal Processor (DSP) the hearing aid is based on. The underlying reason is that most digital hearing aids have very strong constraints in terms of computational capacity, memory and battery, which seriously limit the implementation of advanced algorithms in them. With this in mind, this thesis focuses on the design and implementation of a prototype for a digital hearing aid able to automatically classify the acoustic environments hearing aid users daily face on and select the amplification program that is best adapted to such environment aiming at enhancing the speech intelligibility perceived by the user. The most important contribution of this thesis is the implementation of a prototype for a digital hearing aid that automatically classifies the acoustic environment surrounding its user and selects the most appropriate amplification program for such environment, aiming at enhancing the sound quality perceived by the user. The battery life of this hearing aid is 140 hours, which has been found to be very similar to that of hearing aids in the market, and what is of key importance, there is still about 30% of the DSP resources available for implementing other algorithms

TIC y aprendizaje colaborativo: el caso de un blog de aula para mejorar las habilidades de escritura de los estudiantes preuniversitarios

En un estudi previ, publicat en aquesta mateixa revista, hem observat que als blogs en espanyol orientats a la comprensió i producció textual encara els manquen instruments i materials que afavoreixin els processos cognitius necessaris per a l’elaboració col·laborativa de nous coneixements. Davant d’aquesta situació, en aquest article, analitzem un cas específic d’ús de blogs d’aula en una universitat argentina, en el qual s’han posat en pràctica estratègies didàctiques per a afavorir el treball grupal sobre les activitats d’escriptura. L’anàlisi d’aquest cas proveeix una base empírica rellevant per a reflexionar sobre l’aprenentatge col·laboratiu en activitats d’escriptura en blogs.In a previous study published in RUSC. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal, we observed that blogs in Spanish aimed at textual comprehension and production still lacked the instruments and materials to foster the cognitive processes necessary for collaborative creation of new knowledge. Given that context, this article studies a specific case of using a class blog in an Argentinean university, in which didactic strategies to encourage group writing activities have been put into practice. This case study will provide an important empirical basis for reflection on collaborative learning in blog writing activities.En un estudio previo, publicado en esta misma revista, hemos observado que los blogs en español orientados a la comprensión y producción textual aún carecen de instrumentos y materiales que favorezcan los procesos cognitivos necesarios para la elaboración colaborativa de nuevos conocimientos. Frente a esta situación, en el presente artículo, analizamos un caso específico de uso de blogs de aula en una universidad argentina, en el cual se han puesto en práctica estrategias didácticas para favorecer el trabajo grupal en torno a las actividades de escritura. El análisis de este caso provee una base empírica relevante para reflexionar sobre el aprendizaje colaborativo en actividades de escritura en blogs

Technology Management in SMEs: Suppliers as links for business collaboration

The main aim of this paper is to analyse the process of technology management in footwear manufacturing firms and the influence of its suppliers on this management process. It is argued that suppliers contribute to inter-business collaboration that should serve as a strategy to mitigate the problems of competitiveness and sustainability in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The methodological strategy is quantitative. A random sample of 33 footwear manufacturers settled in Guanajuato, Mexico was selected. The instrument was applied to upper-intermediate level and top-level managers in the participating organisations and validated with the Cronbach Alpha Test ( = 0.8891). This paper allows the understanding of the constituent elements in the process of technology management of these SMEs which is shown through the analysis of means' difference. The results allow the inference that suppliers play a key role in the diffusion and transfer of technology in the footwear cluster. However, SMEs perceive their influence in two directions: as a threat to their competitiveness by sharing information with other companies in the sector and as an opportunity to accelerate the design and development of innovative and competitive products.The main aim of this paper is to analyse the process of technology management in footwear manufacturing firms and the influence of its suppliers on this management process. It is argued that suppliers contribute to inter-business collaboration that should serve as a strategy to mitigate the problems of competitiveness and sustainability in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The methodological strategy is quantitative. A random sample of 33 footwear manufacturers settled in Guanajuato, Mexico was selected. The instrument was applied to upper-intermediate level and top-level managers in the participating organisations and validated with the Cronbach Alpha Test ( = 0.8891). This paper allows the understanding of the constituent elements in the process of technology management of these SMEs which is shown through the analysis of means' difference. The results allow the inference that suppliers play a key role in the diffusion and transfer of technology in the footwear cluster. However, SMEs perceive their influence in two directions: as a threat to their competitiveness by sharing information with other companies in the sector and as an opportunity to accelerate the design and development of innovative and competitive products

Boosting ensembles with controlled emphasis intensity

Boosting ensembles have deserved much attention because their high performance. But they are also sensitive to adverse conditions, such as noisy environments or the presence of outliers. A way to fight against their degradation is to modify the forms of the emphasis weighting which is applied to train each new learner. In this paper, we propose to use a general form for that emphasis function, which not only includes an error dependent and a proximity to the classification boundary dependent term, but also a constant value which serves to control how much emphasis is applied. Two convex combinations are used to consider these terms, and this makes possible to control their relative influence. Experimental results support the effectiveness of this general form of boosting emphasis.This work has been partly supported by research grants CASI-CAM-CM (S2013/ICE-2845,DGUI-CM), and Macro-ADOBE ( TEC2015- 67719-P, MINECO )

Pre-emphasizing Binarized Ensembles to Improve Classification Performance

14th International Work-Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, IWANN 2017Machine ensembles are learning architectures that offer high expressive capacities and, consequently, remarkable performances. This is due to their high number of trainable parameters.In this paper, we explore and discuss whether binarization techniques are effective to improve standard diversification methods and if a simple additional trick, consisting in weighting the training examples, allows to obtain better results. Experimental results, for three selected classification problems, show that binarization permits that standard direct diversification methods (bagging, in particular) achieve better results, obtaining even more significant performance improvements when pre-emphasizing the training samples. Some research avenues that this finding opens are mentioned in the conclusions.This work has been partly supported by research grants CASI-CAM-CM (S2013/ICE-2845, DGUI-CM and FEDER) and Macro-ADOBE (TEC2015-67719-P, MINECO)