Implementation of the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategy in Improving the Quality of Education

The basic need of someone who is classified as important is education. People can develop his intelligence, self-potential, skills and shape personality with an education. Through education, a person can also obtain information and knowledge to train and develop his character. One of the places where people can get education is school. Schools as educational institutions have the duty and responsibility to produce students with character, broad insight, acceptable to society, especially consumers or users and able to compete at a global level. To form quality students, of course, the educational institution itself must have qualified and qualified quality. To determine the performance of educational institutions, a measuring instrument is needed that can assess each process of the running of educational institutions. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a measuring tool which is also one of the management systems used to measure the efficiency of the performance of the institution. In the application or implementation of BSC into educational institutions, it is necessary to pay attention to the elements and factors that are important so that the implementation is successful and able to improve the quality of educational institutions

Leishmania spp. epidemiology of canine leishmaniasis in the Yucatan Peninsula

Canine Leishmaniasis is widespread in various Mexican states, where different species of Leishmania have been isolated from dogs. In the present study, we describe the detection of L. braziliensis, L. infantum, and L. mexicana in serum of dogs from the states of Yucatan and Quintana Roo in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico). A total of 412 sera were analyzed by ELISA using the total extract of the parasite and the iron superoxide dismutase excreted by different trypanosomatids as antigens. We found the prevalence of L. braziliensis to be 7.52%, L. infantum to be 6.07%, and L. mexicana to be 20.63%, in the dog population studied. The results obtained with ELISA using iron superoxide dismutase as the antigen were confirmed by western blot analysis with its greater sensitivity, and the agreement between the two techniques was very high

Spray drying and process optimization of sour orange juice

In this study, production of sour orange juice powder utilizing a spray dryer was investigated. To prevent stickiness, maltodextrin DE 12 was used as a drying agent. While feed flow rate, feed temperature, and air flow rate were kept constant, inlet air temperature (120–160 °C) and maltodextrin content (maltodextrin dry solids/100 g feed mixture dry solids; 10–20%, w/w) were selected as the independent variables. Product properties investigated included ascorbic acid, volatile compounds, and moisture content. Ascorbic acid retention, volatiles retention, and moisture content were used in optimization of the process by response surface methodology. The optimum inlet air temperature and maltodextrin content were 156 °C and 20% w/w maltodextrin, respectively. This study revealed that by applying these optimal conditions, sour orange juice powder with 81.5% ascorbic acid retention, 5.5%, w/w moisture content, and 78% volatiles retention was produced

Experiencias sobre la seguridad alimentaria en Yucatán, México

Se presenta una investigación-acción-participativa, en la Zona Maya de México. Se aborda el problema del desconocimiento sobre la seguridad alimentaria (SA). Objetivo: realizar un diagnóstico sobre la SA, y plantear alternativas de solución. Se encontró que la producción de milpa y huerto familiar, tiene: insuficiente infraestructura; problemas en los cultivos; falta de agua, caminos, transporte, asistencia técnica, recursos económicos y mercados alternativos; y problemas de consumo seguro de alimentos. Se encontró una biodiversidad agrícola de 50 especies; producción de bovinos y aves; poco excedente para venta. Los huertos familiares complementan su dieta; el estado proporciona apoyos insuficientes, y se ayudan con remesas que envían sus familiares desde Estados Unidos. La dieta del "buen comer" es variable en las comunidades. Se analiza la información con los ejes alimentarios: disponibilidad, accesibilidad, consumo y utilización de alimentos; y se proponen las alternativas.Participatory Action Research in the Mexican Mayan Zone is presented. The problem of lack of food security (SA) is tackled. Objective: to make a diagnosis of the SA, and suggest alternative solutions. It was found that the production of cornfield and homegarden, is: poor in infrastructure, with problems in their crops; and they have lack of water, roads, transportation, technical assistance, financial resources and alternative markets; and they also have problems of safe consumption of food. Agricultural biodiversity of 50 species were found; and production of cattle and poultry; they have little surplus for sale. Homegardens supplement their diet; the government provides insufficient support, and they complement their economy with the remittances of their relatives sent from the United States. The diet of "good eating" is variable in communities. The information is analyzed with food axes of availability, accessibility, consumption and utilization of food. Alternatives are proposed.Eje A6: Desarrollo Rural, Movimientos Sociales, Estado y AgroecologíaFacultad de Ciencias Agrarias y Forestale

Experiencias sobre la seguridad alimentaria en Yucatán, México

Se presenta una investigación-acción-participativa, en la Zona Maya de México. Se aborda el problema del desconocimiento sobre la seguridad alimentaria (SA). Objetivo: realizar un diagnóstico sobre la SA, y plantear alternativas de solución. Se encontró que la producción de milpa y huerto familiar, tiene: insuficiente infraestructura; problemas en los cultivos; falta de agua, caminos, transporte, asistencia técnica, recursos económicos y mercados alternativos; y problemas de consumo seguro de alimentos. Se encontró una biodiversidad agrícola de 50 especies; producción de bovinos y aves; poco excedente para venta. Los huertos familiares complementan su dieta; el estado proporciona apoyos insuficientes, y se ayudan con remesas que envían sus familiares desde Estados Unidos. La dieta del "buen comer" es variable en las comunidades. Se analiza la información con los ejes alimentarios: disponibilidad, accesibilidad, consumo y utilización de alimentos; y se proponen las alternativas.Participatory Action Research in the Mexican Mayan Zone is presented. The problem of lack of food security (SA) is tackled. Objective: to make a diagnosis of the SA, and suggest alternative solutions. It was found that the production of cornfield and homegarden, is: poor in infrastructure, with problems in their crops; and they have lack of water, roads, transportation, technical assistance, financial resources and alternative markets; and they also have problems of safe consumption of food. Agricultural biodiversity of 50 species were found; and production of cattle and poultry; they have little surplus for sale. Homegardens supplement their diet; the government provides insufficient support, and they complement their economy with the remittances of their relatives sent from the United States. The diet of "good eating" is variable in communities. The information is analyzed with food axes of availability, accessibility, consumption and utilization of food. Alternatives are proposed.Eje A6: Desarrollo Rural, Movimientos Sociales, Estado y AgroecologíaFacultad de Ciencias Agrarias y Forestale

Serpin Induced Antiviral Activity of Prostaglandin Synthetase-2 against HIV-1 Replication

The serine protease inhibitors (serpins) are anti-inflammatory proteins that have various functions. By screening a diverse panel of viruses, we demonstrate that the serpin antithrombin III (ATIII) has a broad-spectrum anti-viral activity for HIV-1, HCV and HSV. To investigate the mechanism of action in more detail we investigated the HIV-1 inhibition. Using gene-expression arrays we found that multiple host cell signal transduction pathways were activated by ATIII in HIV-1 infected cells but not in uninfected controls. Moreover, the signal pathways initiated by ATIII treatment, were more than 200-fold increased by the use of heparin-activated ATIII. The most up-regulated transcript in HIV-1 infected cells was prostaglandin synthetase-2 (PTGS2). Furthermore, we found that over-expression of PTGS2 reduced levels of HIV-1 replication in human PBMC. These findings suggest a central role for serpins in the host innate anti-viral response. Host factors such as PTGS2 elicited by ATIII treatment could be exploited in the development of novel anti-viral interventions

A Constrained Fuzzy Knowledge-Based System for the Management of Container Yard Operations

The management of container yard operations is considered by yard operators to be a very challenging task due to the many uncertainties inherent in such operations. The storage of the containers is one of those operations that require proper management for the efficient utilisation of the yard, requiring rapid retrieval time and a minimum number of re-handlings. The main challenge is when containers of a different size, type, or weight need to be stored in a yard that holds a number of pre-existing containers. This challenge becomes even more complex when the date and time for the departure of the containers are unknown, as is the case when the container is collected by a third-party logistics company without any prior notice being given. The aim of this study is to develop a new system for the management of container yard operations that takes into consideration a number of factors and constraints that occur in a real-life situation. One of these factors is the duration of stay for the topmost containers of each stack, when the containers are stored. Because the duration of stay for containers in a yard varies dynamically over time, an ‘ON/OFF’ strategy is proposed to activate/deactivate the duration of stay factor constraint if the length of stay for these containers varies significantly over time. A number of tools and techniques are utilised for developing the proposed system including: discrete event simulation for the modelling of container storage and retrieval operations, a fuzzy know ledge-based model for the stack allocation of containers, and a heuristic algorithm called ‘neighbourhood’ for the container retrieval operation. Results show that by adopting the proposed ‘ON/OFF’ strategy, 5% of the number of re-handlings, 2.5% of the total retrieval time, 6.6% of the total re-handling time and 42% of the average waiting time per truck are reduced

Theoretical investigation of the electronic structure of Fe(II) complexes at spin-state transitions

The electronic structure relevant to low spin (LS)high spin (HS) transitions in Fe(II) coordination compounds with a FeN6 core are studied. The selected [Fe(tz)6]2+(1) (tz=1H-tetrazole), [Fe(bipy)3]2+(2) (bipy=2,2’-bipyridine) and [Fe(terpy)2]2+ (3) (terpy=2,2’:6’,2’’-terpyridine) complexes have been actively studied experimentally, and with their respective mono-, bi-, and tridentate ligands, they constitute a comprehensive set for theoretical case studies. The methods in this work include density functional theory (DFT), time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) and multiconfigurational second order perturbation theory (CASPT2). We determine the structural parameters as well as the energy splitting of the LS-HS states (ΔEHL) applying the above methods, and comparing their performance. We also determine the potential energy curves representing the ground and low-energy excited singlet, triplet, and quintet d6 states along the mode(s) that connect the LS and HS states. The results indicate that while DFT is well suited for the prediction of structural parameters, an accurate multiconfigurational approach is essential for the quantitative determination of ΔEHL. In addition, a good qualitative agreement is found between the TD-DFT and CASPT2 potential energy curves. Although the TD-DFT results might differ in some respect (in our case, we found a discrepancy at the triplet states), our results suggest that this approach, with due care, is very promising as an alternative for the very expensive CASPT2 method. Finally, the two dimensional (2D) potential energy surfaces above the plane spanned by the two relevant configuration coordinates in [Fe(terpy)2]2+ were computed both at the DFT and CASPT2 levels. These 2D surfaces indicate that the singlet-triplet and triplet-quintet states are separated along different coordinates, i.e. different vibration modes. Our results confirm that in contrast to the case of complexes with mono- and bidentate ligands, the singlet-quintet transitions in [Fe(terpy)2]2+ cannot be described using a single configuration coordinate