Social interactions and language use in multicultural settings: an exploratory study of personal networks

This study tests the use of social network analysis in the diagnostics of personal communities as relational systems that affect how languages are learned. The egocentric approach of this methodology was applied to identifying the personal networks of adult immigrants attending a literacy program. The study is an exploratory and descriptive analysis with EgoNet software based on five cases. The results show small networks with few significant 'alters' (five to eight), without weak ties in areas of relationship with neighbours or other acquaintances, and in which the prevailing language of communication was the same as that of 'ego' - with, in some cases, multicultural networks using different languages of communication

Health Care in Developing Countries. Breaking the Inequities

The access to health care in developing countries cannot be compared with that existing in developed countries. It is evident that inequality is strongly installed in our world. The are several reasons: lack of progress, access difficulties due to geography, lack of health institutions, scarce human, material and economic resources, and absence of medical insurance. But the fact that there is an essential human factor related to traditional communities, with a particular philosophy on the concept of man and about health has been neglected. Their ideologies had not been taken to consideration by other cultures. These cultures have imposed an acculturation process, without practicing their own inculturation to understand the deep local concept of man and health. International institutions have made several proposals and written documents that have not proven to be very efficient, and when examining and verifying the United Nations annual statistics, no improvements can be observed

“Prevalencia del estreptococo β-Hemolítico del grupo B en el tracto genital de mujeres con ruptura prematura de membranas: estudio realizado en el área de alto riesgo obstétrico del Departamento Materno-Infantil del Hospital Dr. Teodoro Maldonado Carbo. Período Enero - Diciembre 2010”

Antecedentes: El Estreptococo β-hemolítico del grupo B, es un colonizador del tracto urogenital. En gestantes esta bacteria ingresa en el Saco Gestacional y produce una infección vertical en el feto, lo que puede favorecer el desarrollo de enfermedad en el neonato, esta posibilidad se incrementa con la presencia de Ruptura Prematura de Membranas. Se considera que la incidencia anual de esta patología estaría cercana al 3% en el Hospital “Dr. Teodoro Maldonado Carbo”, pero no se sabe cuál es la incidencia de colonización por este agente. Objetivo: Establecer la prevalencia de colonización del tracto genital. Metodología: Se realizó un estudio de tipo transversal en el que se incluyeron 36 gestantes con Ruptura de Membranas comprobada, en las cuales se tomó una muestra de hisopado de cavidad vaginal y se realizó cultivo de EGB en la muestra. Análisis Estadístico: Las variables fueron reportadas como frecuencias simples y porcentajes. Resultados: La incidencia de colonización vaginal por EGB fue del 6%, el 56% de estas pacientes tuvieron entre 20 y 29 años y el 44% cursaba un embarazo de 33 a 37 semanas. El tiempo de latencia fue, en el 53% de los casos, de 2 horas. Conclusiones: No se debe emplear el cribado sistemático de EGB en vagina de gestantes con Ruptura Prematura de Membranas en esta institución

Cálculo del impacto de una cuota compensatoria en el bienestar de los consumidores: Un caso ilustrativo

The most common approach used to evaluate changes in welfare has been the Consumer and Producer Surplus Analysis. This article presents a methodological alternative in order to evaluate in a more exact way this kind of modifications; in this sense, it includes some recent theoretical developments relating consumers welfare. By means of using the concept of Equivalent Variation and econometric and time series techniques, this work measures the impact of the implementation of antidumping duties on the imports of Chinese pommel locks in the mexican consumers welfare.

Seguridad vial: Efecto del alcohol en los tiempos de reacción

El objetivo del presente trabajo se centró en la evaluación del efecto de diferentes niveles de alcohol en sangre en tareas de tiempo de reacción simple, tiempo de reacción de elección y número de errores cometidos en esta última tarea. Para ello se trabajó con una muestra de veintiséis sujetos voluntarios que ingirieron una dosis de bebida alcohólica determinada por peso y sexo. Los resultados muestran que a mayor concentración de alcohol en sangre, se produce un incremento en los tiempos de reacción simple y de elección; ademas en esta última tarea se produce una covariación positiva entre el tiempo de reacción de elección y el número de errores cometidos en la misma, por lo que el alcohol ademas de influir en la velocidad de reacción, aumentándola, disminuye la exactitud de la respuesta

Are Privacy Issues Important in Mexican Online Markets? An Empirical Investigation into Published Online Privacy Statements of Mexican Web Sites

Electronic commerce has had a considerable development in the world; it always implies information exchange, -being it frequently personal information-, between Internet users and site owners. Providing such data to a website, when usually users don’t even know where the company is located, has brought concerns about the use of private information by online business. Some countries have started to pass laws and guidelines regarding the use of private information gathered online, and also non government associations have started to certificate websites in the use and management of personal data. This study explores and analyzes the content of 120 privacy statements from online companies established in Mexico to address all privacy dimensions that seems to be important in online environment and to evaluate characteristics and differences in the use of the personal identifiable information among them. When possible, a comparison is made between some of the results of this research for companies operating in Mexico, and the findings made by Pollach (2006) for companies operating in U.S.A. Finally some possible future work is described and some conclusions are made

Prognosing the Compliance of Declarative Business Processes Using Event Trace Robustness

Several proposals have studied the compliance of execution of business process traces in accordance with a set of compliance rules. Unfortunately, the detection of a compliance violation (diagnosis) means that the observed events have already violated the compliance rules that describe the model. In turn, the detection of a compliance violation before its actual occurrence would prevent misbehaviour of the business processes. This functionality is referred to as proactive management of compliance violations in literature. However, existing approaches focus on the detection of inconsistencies between the compliance rules or monitoring process instances that are in a violable state. The notion of robustness could help us to prognosticate the occurrence of these inconsistent states in a premature way, and to detect, depending on the current execution state of the process instance, how “close” the execution is to a possible violation. On top of being able to possibly avoid violations, a robust trace is not sensitive to small changes. In this paper we propose the way to determine whether a process instance is robust against a set of compliance rules during its execution at runtime. Thanks to the use of constraint programming and the capacities of super solutions, a robust trace can be guaranteed

Comparison of the thermal decomposition processes of several aminoalcohol-based ZnO inks with one containing ethanolamine

Four inks for the production of ZnO semiconducting films have been prepared with zinc acetate dihy-drate as precursor salt and one among the following aminoalcohols: aminopropanol (APr), aminomethylbutanol (AMB), aminophenol (APh) and aminobenzyl alcohol (AB) as stabilizing agent. Their thermaldecomposition process has been analyzed in situ by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scan-ning calorimetry (DSC) and evolved gas analysis (EGA), whereas the solid product has been analysedex-situ by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and infrared spectroscopy (IR). Although, except for the APh ink, crys-talline ZnO is already obtained at 300◦C, the films contain an organic residue that evolves at highertemperature in the form of a large variety of nitrogen-containing cyclic compounds. The results indicatethat APr can be a better stabilizing agent than ethanolamine (EA). It gives larger ZnO crystal sizes withsimilar carbon content. However, a common drawback of all the amino stabilizers (EA included) is thatnitrogen atoms have not been completely removed from the ZnO film at the highest temperature of ourexperiments (600◦C)