Fully Informed Vulnerable Road Users - Simpler, Maybe Better

Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) are all those with an increased vulnerability on the road, in particular non-motorised ones. Until now, the emphasis has been in politics more focused on drivers, vehicles and infrastructures. However, recent developments show a shift in other directions, with researchers now devoting efforts to improve VRUs' safety. Hence, this work focuses on pedestrian walking and crossing behaviour, attitudes, motivations and habits, being grounded on an approach to Knowledge Representation and Reasoning centred on logic programming, which establishes a formal logical inference engine that is complemented with an Artificial Neural Network line to computation

An Entropic Approach to Burnout in the Management of a Kitchen Staff Team

Job satisfaction is an important factor in hospitality industry, figuratively, its chimera. A concept has not a single cause; rather, it is the product of elements such as conditions and relationships that determine the workplace, the organizational system of employment, and social, cultural, and economic uncertainties. For example, and as its antonym, Maslach defined burnout “as a psychological syndrome involving motional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a diminished sense of personal accomplishment that occurred among various professionals who work with other people in challenging situations”. This multidimensional approach describes the plight of a three-dimensional concept that is derived empirically, has a similarity with stress, adds an important social dimension to emotional issues such as exhaustion, deper sonalization, and challenging situations, i.e., there is the perception that the entropic state that each kitchen staff team member conveys is relevant for an appropriate personnel management of the kitchen staff team, and mirrors the social dimension that is object of study in this work

Full Informed Digital Transformation - Simpler, Maybe Better

The digital age is upon us and challenges many of today’s businesses. To succeed with digitalization, it is needed a well-integrated enterprise and Information Technology organization that works seamlessly and thrives towards common goals. This is easy to say, but harder to achieve. Digital Transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how one operates and delivers value to customers. It is also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experimenting and coming to terms with doing something rather than making it perfect. This will be the focus of this work, which will be delivered as a computational agency integrating the phases of data gathering, the anticipation of a logic representation of uncertainty and vagueness, as well as the phases of data processing and analysis of results

Fully Informed Classification Systems - Simpler, Maybe Better

This paper presents the starting point to adverse event reporting and learning systems designed to describe and prevent unfavorable happenings in Public Services organizations. To achieve this goal, the Eindhoven’s Classification Method was changed to house such incidents. On the other hand, the evolutionary process of the knowledge body of such systems is to be understood as a process of energy devaluation, i.e., their data/information/knowledge will be represented and handled as pure energy transactions, being such procedures and the respective outcomes object of formal proof under a Proof Theoretical approach to Problem Solving

Employees balance and stability as key points in organizational performance

System analyses deal with interrelationships between different variables that keep the system in balance. In many analysis of complex thinking, a system is viewed as a complex unit in which the ‘whole’ is not reduced to the ‘sum’ of its parts; the system becomes an ambiguous item because it consists of several entities that interact with unforeseen results or, in other words, it is situated at a transdisciplinary level, it is impossible for an area to have a complete reading of its complexity. It was also mentioned that the concept of the open system best describes complexity by stating that ‘the laws of the organization are not equilibrium, but an imbalance that is restored or compensated for by stabilized dynamics’. This idea originated from the field of thermodynamics and the second law, in which the imbalance that it maintains allows the system for an apparent balance. This fragile steady state has something of a paradox, since the structures remain the same, but their constituents are changeable. The concept of open system undoes the door to a theory of evolution that can only derive from the interactions between a system and its ecosystem. Within this systemic approach, the focus of the analysis takes into account the ambiguity, multidisciplinary and complexity associated with system adjustment, i.e. it is intended to qualify an employee job based on their experience and knowledge as a measure of their impact on the organization performance

Characterization of ESBL-Producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae Isolated from Clinical Samples in a Northern Portuguese Hospital: Predominance of CTX-M-15 and High Genetic Diversity

Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/)[EN] Background: Enterobacteriaceae are major players in the spread of resistance to β-lactam antibiotics through the action of CTX-M β-lactamases. We aimed to analyze the diversity and genetic characteristics of ESBL-producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from patients in a Northern Portuguese hospital. Methods: A total of 62 cefotaxime/ceftazidime-resistant E. coli (n = 38) and K. pneumoniae (n = 24) clinical isolates were studied. Identification was performed by MALDI-TOF MS. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing against 13 antibiotics was performed. Detection of ESBL-encoding genes and other resistance genes, phylogenetic grouping, and molecular typing (for selected isolates) was carried out by PCR/sequencing. Results: ESBL activity was detected in all 62 E. coli and K. pneumoniae isolates. Most of the ESBL-producing E. coli isolates carried a blaCTX-M gene (37/38 isolates), being blaCTX-M-15 predominant (n = 32), although blaCTX-M-27 (n = 1) and blaCTX-M-1 (n = 1) were also detected. Two E. coli isolates carried the blaKPC2/3 gene. The lineages ST131-B2 and ST410-A were detected among the ESBL-producing blood E. coli isolates. Regarding the 24 ESBL-producing K. pneumoniae isolates, 18 carried a blaCTX-M gene (blaCTX-M-15, 16 isolates; blaCTX-M-55, 2 isolates). All K. pneumoniae isolates carried blaSHV genes, including ESBL-variants (blaSHV-12 and blaSHV-27, 14 isolates) or non-ESBL-variants (blaSHV-11 and blaSHV-28, 10 isolates); ten K. pneumoniae isolates also carried the blaKPC2/3 gene and showed imipenem-resistance. ESBL-positive E. coli isolates were ascribed to the B2 phylogenetic group (82%), mostly associated with ST131 lineage and, at a lower rate, to ST410/A. Regarding K. pneumoniae, the three international lineages ST15, ST147, and ST280 were detected among selected isolates. Conclusions: Different ESBL variants of CTX-M (especially CTX-M-15) and SHV-type (specially SHV-12) were detected among CTX/CAZR E. coli and K. pneumoniae isolates, in occasions associated with carbapenemase genes (blaKPC2/3 gene).SII.C. gratefully acknowledges the financial support of “Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia” (FCT—Portugal) related to Ph.D. grant, through the reference SFRH/BD/133266/2017 (Medicina Clínica e Ciências da Saúde), as well as MCTES (Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior) and European Union (EU), with reference to Fundo Social Europeu (FSE). The experimental work carried out in the University of La Rioja (Spain) was financed by the project SAF2016-76571-R from the Agencia Estatal de Investigation (AEI) of Spain and FEDER of EU. This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Spain; grant number RTI2018-098267-R-C33), the Junta de Castilla y León (Consejería de Educación, Spain; grant number LE018P20) and the Associate Laboratory for Green Chemistry—LAQV which is financed by national funds from FCT/MCTES (UIDB/50006/2020 and UIDP/50006/2020)

Assessing individuals learning’s impairments from a social entropic perspective

Individuals with Learning Impairments (LI) may have not only language problems as reading, spelling and writing, but also difficulties in terms of their relationship with the society, i.e., may have glitches not only with language but also with social handiness. On the other hand, the dimension that most contributes to the process of acceptance or integration of an individual in a learning environment or in the society in general, is Emotional Intelligence, i.e., emotion is the foundation for creativity, passion, optimism, drive, and transformation. Motivation is a synonym for enthusiasm, initiative, and persistence. The technical skills have passed to the bottom, since they denote the rational that sustains an individual’s involvement in such processes. Indeed, among other things, this is the reason why this work focuses on LI and its various manifestations and how it may affect, evaluate and treat the natural development of a human being and the environment (society) in which him/her is immersed.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013

Predicting diabetic foot maturing through evolutionary computation

It is a twenty-first-century disease, its numbers are still growing exponentially. This brings one to the subject of this work, the Maturing of Diabetic Foot which, like diabetes, rises to values never seen before. It is envisaging the development of an ImageJ plug-into extract relevant feature from diabetic foot images and, in conjunction with the patient’s clinical and lifelong data, a computational system to predict and evaluate its severity. The applied problem-solving method is based on a symbolic/sub-symbolic line of logical formalisms that make complex systems easier to develop and analyze, where solutions to new problems are based on answers to previous ones, and itemized as a Case-Based Reasoning/Artificial Neural Network approach to computing.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013

Characterization of esbl-producing escherichia coli and klebsiella pneumoniae isolated from clinical samples in a northern portuguese hospital: Predominance of ctx-m-15 and high genetic diversity

Background: Enterobacteriaceae are major players in the spread of resistance to β-lactam antibiotics through the action of CTX-M β-lactamases. We aimed to analyze the diversity and genetic characteristics of ESBL-producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from patients in a Northern Portuguese hospital. Methods: A total of 62 cefotaxime/ceftazidime-resistant E. coli (n = 38) and K. pneumoniae (n = 24) clinical isolates were studied. Identification was performed by MALDI-TOF MS. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing against 13 antibiotics was performed. Detection of ESBL-encoding genes and other resistance genes, phylogenetic grouping, and molecular typing (for selected isolates) was carried out by PCR/sequencing. Results: ESBL activity was detected in all 62 E. coli and K. pneumoniae isolates. Most of the ESBL-producing E. coli isolates carried a bla(CTX-M) gene (37/38 isolates), being bla(CTX-M-15) predominant (n = 32), although bla(CTX-M-27) (n = 1) and bla(CTX-M-1) (n = 1) were also detected. Two E. coli isolates carried the bla(KPC2/3) gene. The lineages ST131-B2 and ST410-A were detected among the ESBL-producing blood E. coli isolates. Regarding the 24 ESBL-producing K. pneumoniae isolates, 18 carried a bla(CTX-M) gene (bla(CTX-M-15), 16 isolates; bla(CTX-M-55), 2 isolates). All K. pneumoniae isolates carried bla(SHV) genes, including ESBL-variants (bla(SHV-12) and bla(SHV-27), 14 isolates) or non-ESBL-variants (bla(SHV-11) and bla(SHV-28), 10 isolates); ten K. pneumoniae isolates also carried the bla(KPC2/3) gene and showed imipenem-resistance. ESBL-positive E. coli isolates were ascribed to the B(2) phylogenetic group (82%), mostly associated with ST131 lineage and, at a lower rate, to ST410/A. Regarding K. pneumoniae, the three international lineages ST15, ST147, and ST280 were detected among selected isolates. Conclusions: Different ESBL variants of CTX-M (especially CTX-M-15) and SHV-type (specially SHV-12) were detected among CTX/CAZ(R) E. coli and K. pneumoniae isolates, in occasions associated with carbapenemase genes (bla(KPC2/3) gene)

Entropy and organizational performance

The main purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of the workers’ behavior in terms of their emotions and feelings in system’s performance, i.e., one is looking at issues concerned with Organizational Sustainability. Indeed, one’s aim is to define a process that motivates and inspires managers and personnel to act upon the limit, i.e., to achieve the organizational goals through an effective and efficient implementation of operational and behavioral strategies. The focus will be on the importance of specific psychosocial variables that may affect collective pro-organizational attitudes. Data that is increasing exponentially, and somehow being out of control, i.e., the question is to know the correct value of the information that may be behind these numbers.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019