A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges

Colombian consensus recommendations for diagnosis, management and treatment of the infection by SARS-COV-2/ COVID-19 in health care facilities - Recommendations from expert´s group based and informed on evidence

La Asociación Colombiana de Infectología (ACIN) y el Instituto de Evaluación de Nuevas Tecnologías de la Salud (IETS) conformó un grupo de trabajo para desarrollar recomendaciones informadas y basadas en evidencia, por consenso de expertos para la atención, diagnóstico y manejo de casos de Covid 19. Estas guías son dirigidas al personal de salud y buscar dar recomendaciones en los ámbitos de la atención en salud de los casos de Covid-19, en el contexto nacional de Colombia

4to. Congreso Internacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad. Memoria académica

Este volumen acoge la memoria académica de la Cuarta edición del Congreso Internacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad, CITIS 2017, desarrollado entre el 29 de noviembre y el 1 de diciembre de 2017 y organizado por la Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (UPS) en su sede de Guayaquil. El Congreso ofreció un espacio para la presentación, difusión e intercambio de importantes investigaciones nacionales e internacionales ante la comunidad universitaria que se dio cita en el encuentro. El uso de herramientas tecnológicas para la gestión de los trabajos de investigación como la plataforma Open Conference Systems y la web de presentación del Congreso http://citis.blog.ups.edu.ec/, hicieron de CITIS 2017 un verdadero referente entre los congresos que se desarrollaron en el país. La preocupación de nuestra Universidad, de presentar espacios que ayuden a generar nuevos y mejores cambios en la dimensión humana y social de nuestro entorno, hace que se persiga en cada edición del evento la presentación de trabajos con calidad creciente en cuanto a su producción científica. Quienes estuvimos al frente de la organización, dejamos plasmado en estas memorias académicas el intenso y prolífico trabajo de los días de realización del Congreso Internacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la Sociedad al alcance de todos y todas

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world

An artificial immune system based on information theory for keyword extraction from text documents

This paper presents a model for keyword extraction, extending the basic concepts commonly used in this task, in order to get a formal background that allows determining the importance of the keywords to the documents. The proposed model combines an artificial immune system with a mathematical background based on information theory; this new model has the advantage that does not need any domain knowledge, neither the use of a stopword list or any previous information about the content of the documents. The final result is a set of keywords for each category into the corpus used

Tecnología de registro distribuido (DLT): Características y escenarios de aplicación: Blockchain, DLT, DLT-DAG, Tecnología de registro distribuido

This article presents an evolution of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) highlighting the differences between its two main categories, DLT based on a blockchain coined in the literature as Blockchain and DLT without blocks where its data structure is based on a graph directed acyclic, usually referred to as DLT-DAG. On the other hand, an analysis of the characteristics of a DLT is carried out, such as privacy, concurrency and the consensus method, identifying strengths and weaknesses. Finally, a synthesis of the application scenarios of this technology is made, grouped into the following categories: health, politics and regulation, digital identity, economy and finance, Internet of things and document records.Este artículo describe la Tecnología de Registro Distribuido (DLT, por su sigla en inglés). Se presentan las principales características de DLT cómo son la privacidad, concurrencia y el método de consenso, identificando fortalezas y debilidades de la tecnología.  Además, se describen  sus dos principales categorías, DLT basado en una cadena de bloques acuñado en la literatura como Blockchain y DLT sin bloques donde su estructura de datos se basa en un grafo acíclico dirigido, denominado usualmente DLT-DAG.  Finalmente, se presenta una síntesis de los escenarios de aplicación de esta tecnología agrupados en las siguientes categorías: salud, política y regulación, identidad digital, economía y finanzas, Internet de las cosas y registros de documentos

Author Correction: A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Correction to: Nature Human Behaviour https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01173-x, published online 2 August 2021. In the version of this article initially published, the following authors were omitted from the author list and the Author contributionssection for “investigation” and “writing and editing”: Nandor Hajdu (Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest,Hungary), Jordane Boudesseul (Facultad de Psicología, Instituto de Investigación Científica, Universidad de Lima, Lima, Perú), RafałMuda (Faculty of Economics, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland) and Sandersan Onie (Black Dog Institute, UNSWSydney, Sydney, Australia & Emotional Health for All Foundation, Jakarta, Indonesia). In addition, Saeideh FatahModares’ name wasoriginally misspelled as Saiedeh FatahModarres in the author list. Further, affiliations have been corrected for Maria Terskova (NationalResearch University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia), Susana Ruiz Fernandez (FOM University of Applied Sciences,Essen; Leibniz-Institut fur Wissensmedien, Tubingen, and LEAD Research Network, Eberhard Karls University, Tubingen, Germany),Hendrik Godbersen (FOM University of Applied Sciences, Essen, Germany), Gulnaz Anjum (Department of Psychology, Simon FraserUniversity, Burnaby, Canada, and Department of Economics & Social Sciences, Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, Pakistan)

Author correction: A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic

Correction to: Nature Human Behaviour https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01173-x, published online 2 August 2021. In the version of this article initially published, the following authors were omitted from the author list and the Author contributionssection for “investigation” and “writing and editing”: Nandor Hajdu (Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest,Hungary), Jordane Boudesseul (Facultad de Psicología, Instituto de Investigación Científica, Universidad de Lima, Lima, Perú), RafałMuda (Faculty of Economics, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland) and Sandersan Onie (Black Dog Institute, UNSWSydney, Sydney, Australia & Emotional Health for All Foundation, Jakarta, Indonesia). In addition, Saeideh FatahModares’ name wasoriginally misspelled as Saiedeh FatahModarres in the author list. Further, affiliations have been corrected for Maria Terskova (NationalResearch University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia), Susana Ruiz Fernandez (FOM University of Applied Sciences,Essen; Leibniz-Institut fur Wissensmedien, Tubingen, and LEAD Research Network, Eberhard Karls University, Tubingen, Germany),Hendrik Godbersen (FOM University of Applied Sciences, Essen, Germany), Gulnaz Anjum (Department of Psychology, Simon FraserUniversity, Burnaby, Canada, and Department of Economics & Social Sciences, Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, Pakistan)

A global test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy which modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries/regions (N = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vs. both control conditions) had consistent effects in reducing negative emotions and increasing positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world to build resilience during the pandemic and beyond

In COVID-19 Health Messaging, Loss Framing Increases Anxiety with Little-to-No Concomitant Benefits: Experimental Evidence from 84 Countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in terms of potential losses (e.g., "If you do not practice these steps, you can endanger yourself and others") or potential gains (e.g., "If you practice these steps, you can protect yourself and others")? Collecting data in 48 languages from 15,929 participants in 84 countries, we experimentally tested the effects of message framing on COVID-19-related judgments, intentions, and feelings. Loss- (vs. gain-) framed messages increased self-reported anxiety among participants cross-nationally with little-to-no impact on policy attitudes, behavioral intentions, or information seeking relevant to pandemic risks. These results were consistent across 84 countries, three variations of the message framing wording, and 560 data processing and analytic choices. Thus, results provide an empirical answer to a global communication question and highlight the emotional toll of loss-framed messages. Critically, this work demonstrates the importance of considering unintended affective consequences when evaluating nudge-style interventions