Perfeccionamiento del sistema de gestión de la Universidad de Cienfuegos

Promover el diseño de sistemas de gestión y la integración de los procesos en las instituciones de educación universitaria constituye una prioridad de trabajo del Ministerio de Educación Superior. La investigación se realiza en la Universidad de Cienfuegos y tiene como objetivo general: Perfeccionar el sistema de gestión de la Universidad de Cienfuegos sobre la base de lograr una integración del enfoque a proceso, la dirección estratégica y el sistema de control interno, que permita el desarrollo de acciones integradas que faciliten el cumplimiento de los objetivos y misión de la universidad. Se hace uso de técnicas de recopilación de información, así como las herramientas propias de la gestión por procesos que posibilitan identificar, documentar, diagnosticar y mejorar los procesos, técnicas de identificación, evaluación y control de riesgos, matriz DAFO, matriz causa-efecto, técnicas de priorización y las 5Ws y 1H. Se obtiene como resultado el perfeccionamiento del mapa de procesos de la Universidad de Cienfuegos, la integración de la planificación estratégica enfocada a procesos, la documentación y evaluación de los procesos que conforman esta institución, el manual de procesos y los dos primeros componentes de la Resolución 60/11 de la Contraloría General de la República (CGR). Se proponen acciones de mejoras que conllevan al perfeccionamiento de los procesos que constituyen el sistema de gestión de la Universidad de Cienfuegos

Promoting the Sustainability of Organizations: Contribution of Transformational Leadership to Job Engagement

The psychology of sustainability highlights the importance of building organizational environments promoting the employees’ well-being, and leaders play an important role in it. Drawing from Kahn’s theory, the purpose of this study is to simultaneously examine the mediating role of task significance, perceived organizational support (POS) and employees’ core self-evaluations (CSE) in the relationship between supervisors’ transformational leadership and job engagement. In order to test the proposed model, a structural equation modelling was performed using the bootstrapping technique in IBM SPSS Amos 23 for Windows. The sample consisted of 320 employees from emergent high-tech and knowledge-based SMEs in Spain. The results supported all the hypotheses posited. By helping employees to find the meaning and significance of their work, making them feel supported by the organization and strengthening their sense of worth and competence, transformational leaders boost job engagement, a key aspect of the human dimension of organizational sustainability. This paper contributes to the psychology of sustainability by advancing knowledge of the mechanisms through which supervisors’ transformational leadership influences employees’ well-being in terms of job engagementS

Decision-making support for input data in business processes according to former instances

Business Processes facilitate the execution of a set of activities to achieve the strategic plans of a company. During the execution of a business process model, several decisions can be made that frequently involve the values of the input data of certain activities. The decision regarding the value of these input data concerns not only the correct execution of the business process in terms of consistency, but also the compliance with the strategic plans of the company. Smart decision-support systems provide information by analyzing the process model and the business rules to be satisfied, but other elements, such as the previous temporal variation of the data during the former executed instances of similar processes, can also be employed to guide the input data decisions at instantiation time. Our proposal consists of learning the evolution patterns of the temporal variation of the data values in a process model extracted from previous process instances by applying Constraint Programming techniques. The knowledge obtained is applied in a Decision Support System (DSS) which helps in the maintenance of the alignment of the process execution with the organizational strategic plans, through a framework and a methodology. Finally, to present a proof of concept, the proposal has been applied to a complete case study.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología RTI2018-094283-B-C3

An Architecture for Querying Business Process, Business Process Instances, and Business Data Models

Business data are usually managed by means of business processes during process instances. These viewpoints (business, instances and data) are strongly related because the life-cycle of business data objects need to be aligned with the business process and process instance models. However, current approaches do not provide a mechanism to integrate these three viewpoints nor to query them all together while maintaining the information in the distributed, heterogeneous systems where they have been created. In this paper, we propose the integration of the business process, business process instance, and business data models by using their metamodels and also an architecture to support this integration. The goal of this integration is to make the most of the three models and the technologies that support them in an isolated way. In our approach, it is not necessary to change the source data formats nor transforming them into a common one. Furthermore, the proposed architecture allows us to query the three models even though they come from three different technologies.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2015-63502-C3-2-RMinisterio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2013-40848-RMinisterio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2016-75394-

La aplicación de materiales multimedia en la enseñanza de conceptos constructivos

La llegada de las nuevas Tecnologías al aprendizaje y a la docencia universitaria, se está produciendo con grandes desfases entre las diversas asignaturas e incluso titulaciones de nuestras universidades. Presentamos nuestras experiencias y la investigación desarrollada en la asignatura de Introducción a la Construcción, correspondiente al primer curso de los estudios de Arquitectura Superior en la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. Durante los últimos dos cursos 2002/03 y 2003/04 hemos aplicado distintos medios audiovisuales para la elaboración de materiales multimedia. Estos materiales, confeccionados con la ayuda de diversos programas informáticos, han demostrado ser de gran ayuda para acelerar el proceso de aprendizaje de los nuevos contenidos planteados a los alumnos de reciente ingreso. Por un lado, los conceptos teóricos se han podido captar rápidamente de una manera visual, mediante gráficos, dibujos, fotografías y animaciones o videos reales. Por otra parte, han servido como apoyo a las prácticas realizadas semanalmente, de manera tutorizada, que siguen el “método del descubrimiento” a partir de las explicaciones genéricas de teoría. La costosa elaboración de estos materiales ha sido recompensada sobradamente por la buena acogida y resultados obtenidos por ls alumnos. Consideramos que esta metodología ha producido una satisfactoria asimilación de los conocimientos, quedando reconocido por los propios alumnos como por profesores de otras asignaturas. Esto nos anima y nos lleva a procurar su difusión pues consideramos estos medios como elemento indispensable para estrategias de mejora del aprendizaje.The arrival of new technologies applied to the learning and university teaching, has become with large differences among the diverse subjects and even qualifications in our Universities. We present our experiences and investigation developed in the Introduction to the Construction subject, corresponding to the first course studies of Architecture in the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. During the last two courses, 2002/03 and 2003/04, we have applied different audiovisual media for the elaboration of multimedia materials. These materials, concocted with the aid of diverse data processing programs, have shown to be of great aid to accelerate the new contents learning process presented to the recent income students. On the one hand, the theoretical concepts have been able to be acquire quickly in a visual way, by using graphic, drawings, photographs and animations or real videos. On the other hand, have served as support to the practices carried out weekly, with tutoring instruction, that follow the “discovery method ” from the generic theory explanations. The hard work in these materials elaboration has been fully rewarded with the academic results obtained by the students. We believe this methodology has produced a satisfactory knowledge comprehension, recognized by the students as well as other subjects teachers. This encourages and carries us to seek its diffusion, because we consider these media are indispensable elements in learning improvement strategies

The Impact of Socio-Economic Status on Self-Rated Health: Study of 29 Countries Using European Social Surveys (2002–2008)

Studies show that the association between socio-economic status (SES) and self-rated health (SRH) varies in different countries, however there are not many country comparisons that examine this relationship over time. The objective of the present study is to determine the effect of three SES measures on SRH in 29 countries according to findings in European Social Surveys (2002–2008), in order to study how socio-economic inequalities can vary our subjective state of health. In line with previous studies, income inequalities seem to be greater not only in Anglo Saxon and Scandinavian countries, but especially in Eastern European countries. The impact of education is greater in Southern countries, and this effect is similar in Eastern and Scandinavian countries, although occupational status does not produce significant differences in southern countries. This study shows the general relevance of socio educational factors on SRH. Individual economic conditions are obviously a basic factor contributing to a good state of health, but education could be even more relevant to preserve it. In this sense, policies should not only aim at reducing income inequalities, but should also further the education of people who are in risk of social exclusion

Low levels of granulocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells may be a good marker of survival in the follow-up of patients with severe COVID-19

Infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes a disease (coronavirus disease 2019, COVID-19) that may develop into a systemic disease with immunosuppression and death in its severe form. Myeloid-derived suppressive cells (MDSCs) are inhibitory cells that contribute to immunosuppression in patients with cancer and infection. Increased levels of MDSCs have been found in COVID-19 patients, although their role in the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 has not been clarified. For this reason, we raised the question whether MDSCs could be useful in the follow-up of patients with severe COVID-19 in the intensive care unit (ICU). Thus, we monitored the immunological cells, including MDSCs, in 80 patients admitted into the ICU. After 1, 2, and 3 weeks, we examined for a possible association with mortality (40 patients). Although the basal levels of circulating MDSCs did not discriminate between the two groups of patients, the last measurement before the endpoint (death or ICU discharge) showed that patients discharged alive from the ICU had lower levels of granulocytic MDSCs (G-MDSCs), higher levels of activated lymphocytes, and lower levels of exhausted lymphocytes compared with patients who had a bad evolution (death). In conclusion, a steady increase of G-MDSCs during the follow-up of patients with severe COVID-19 was found in those who eventually died