The evaluation of ICT educational policies: Analysis of the impact of the Digital Educational System (SED)

This study analyses the impact of the Digital Educational System (SED) offered to schools in Ceuta and Melilla by the Spanish Ministry of Education's National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF). The aim was to evaluate the effect of an ICT educational policy using a multi-faceted, bespoke model based on mixed methodologies. First, an exploratory study of SED was carried out, using Google Analytics to evaluate its actual use, and comparing it with the digital presence of schools in other on-line environments. Next, the views of teachers on SED's impact were analysed using a bespoke questionnaire (n = 370). Finally, the views of those responsible for the project were examined, by conducting semi-structured interviews with each of the seven people in charge of managing the project. The results show how institutions must promote systemic evaluation for these policies to be sufficiently effective. It is concluded that teachers have high expectations of the educational potential of digital tools, but there is still no evidence that these tools have a positive effect on the learning processes of their students.En esta investigación se analizó el impacto del Sistema Educativo Digital (SED) impulsado por el INTEF del Ministerio de Educación español en los centros de enseñanza de Ceuta y Melilla. El propósito fue evaluar el efecto de una política educativa TIC a través de un modelo ecléctico propio basado en metodologías mixtas. En una primera fase se realizó un estudio exploratorio del SED, evaluando su uso real a través de Google Analytics y comparándolo con la presencia digital de los centros en otros entornos en línea. En el segundo estudio se exploró la visión del profesorado sobre el impacto del SED a través de un cuestionario ad hoc (n = 370). Por último, en el tercer estudio se procedió a examinar la perspectiva de los responsables del proyecto realizando entrevistas semiestructuradas a cada una de las siete personas encargadas de su gestión. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que las instituciones deben fomentar la evaluación sistémica para que estas políticas sean suficientemente efectivas. Se concluye que los docentes tienen altas expectativas acerca del potencial educativo de las herramientas digitales, pero siguen sin evidenciar los efectos positivos de las mismas en los procesos de aprendizaje de su alumnad

La evaluación de las políticas educativas TIC : análisis del impacto del Sistema Educativo Digital (SED)

En esta investigación se analizó el impacto del Sistema Educativo Digital (SED) impulsado por el INTEF del Ministerio de Educación español en los centros de enseñanza de Ceuta y Melilla. El propósito fue evaluar el efecto de una política educativa TIC a través de un modelo ecléctico propio basado en metodologías mixtas. En una primera fase se realizó un estudio exploratorio del SED, evaluando su uso real a través de Google Analytics y comparándolo con la presencia digital de los centros en otros entornos en línea. En el segundo estudio se exploró la visión del profesorado sobre el impacto del SED a través de un cuestionario ad hoc (n = 370). Por último, en el tercer estudio se procedió a examinar la perspectiva de los responsables del proyecto realizando entrevistas semiestructuradas a cada una de las siete personas encargadas de su gestión. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que las instituciones deben fomentar la evaluación sistémica para que estas políticas sean suficientemente efectivas. Se concluye que los docentes tienen altas expectativas acerca del potencial educativo de las herramientas digitales, pero siguen sin evidenciar los efectos positivos de las mismas en los procesos de aprendizaje de su alumnado.En aquesta investigació s'ha analitzat l'impacte del Sistema Educatiu Digital (SED) impulsat per l'INTEF del Ministeri d'Educació espanyol als centres d'ensenyament de Ceuta i Melilla. S'ha mirat d'avaluar l'efecte d'una política educativa TIC a través d'un model eclèctic propi basat en metodologies mixtes. En una primera fase s'ha realitzat un estudi exploratori del SED avaluant-ne l'ús real mitjançant Google Analytics i comparant-lo amb la presència digital dels centres en altres entorns en línia. En el segon estudi s'hi analitza la visió del professorat sobre l'impacte del SED a través d'un qüestionari ad hoc (n = 370). Finalment, en el tercer estudi es procedeix a examinar la perspectiva dels responsables del projecte realitzant entrevistes semiestructurades a cadascuna de les set persones encarregades de gestionar-lo. Els resultats posen de manifest que les institucions han de fomentar l'avaluació sistèmica perquè aquestes polítiques siguin prou efectives. Es conclou que els docents tenen altes expectatives sobre el potencial educatiu de les eines digitals, però que segueixen sense evidenciar-ne els efectes positius en els processos d'aprenentatge del seu alumnat.This study analyses the impact of the Digital Educational System (SED) offered to schools in Ceuta and Melilla by the Spanish Ministry of Education's National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF). The aim was to evaluate the effect of an ICT educational policy using a multi-faceted, bespoke model based on mixed methodologies. First, an exploratory study of SED was carried out, using Google Analytics to evaluate its actual use, and comparing it with the digital presence of schools in other on-line environments. Next, the views of teachers on SED's impact were analysed using a bespoke questionnaire (n = 370). Finally, the views of those responsible for the project were examined, by conducting semi-structured interviews with each of the seven people in charge of managing the project. The results show how institutions must promote systemic evaluation for these policies to be sufficiently effective. It is concluded that teachers have high expectations of the educational potential of digital tools, but there is still no evidence that these tools have a positive effect on the learning processes of their students

Oxidation of flame retardant Tetrabromobisphenol A by a biocatalytic nanofiber of chloroperoxidase

Background: Tetrabromobisphenol (TBBPA), a flame retardant compound, is considered a ubiquitous pollutant, with potential impact on the environment and human health. Several technologies have been applied to accelerate its degradation and minimize environmental impacts. Due to its aromaticity character, peroxidase enzymes may be employed to carry out its transformation in mild conditions. Therefore, the purpose of this work was to determine the capacity of the enzyme chloroperoxidase (CPO) to oxidize TBBPA in several water samples. Methods: The oxidation capacity of CPO was evaluated in catalytic conditions using water samples from surface and groundwater, as well as effluents from wastewater treatment plants. The biocatalytic performance of CPO was improved due to its immobilization on nanofibers composed of polyvinyl alcohol and chitosan (PVA/chitosan). Results: Free and immobilized CPO were able to transform more than 80% in short reaction times (60 min); producing more biodegradable and less toxic products. Particularly, the immobilized enzyme was catalytically active in a wider range of pH than the free enzyme with the possibility of reusing it up to five times. Conclusions: The biocatalytic oxidation of TBBPA under environmental conditions is highly efficient, even in complex media such as treated effluents of wastewater treatment plantsThis research was funded by belongs to CRETUS and the Galician Competitive Research Group ED431C-2017/29 (co-funded by FEDER) and would like to thank the support granted by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation: MODENA Project CTQ2016-79461-R (MT MOREIRA), co-funded by FEDERS

Sentiment Analysis on Tweets about Diabetes: An Aspect-Level Approach

In recent years, some methods of sentiment analysis have been developed for the health domain; however, the diabetes domain has not been explored yet. In addition, there is a lack of approaches that analyze the positive or negative orientation of each aspect contained in a document (a review, a piece of news, and a tweet, among others). Based on this understanding, we propose an aspect-level sentiment analysis method based on ontologies in the diabetes domain. The sentiment of the aspects is calculated by considering the words around the aspect which are obtained through N-gram methods (N-gram after, N-gram before, and N-gram around). To evaluate the effectiveness of our method, we obtained a corpus from Twitter, which has been manually labelled at aspect level as positive, negative, or neutral. The experimental results show that the best result was obtained through the N-gram around method with a precision of 81.93%, a recall of 81.13%, and an F-measure of 81.24%

Clonal chromosomal mosaicism and loss of chromosome Y in elderly men increase vulnerability for SARS-CoV-2

The pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19) had an estimated overall case fatality ratio of 1.38% (pre-vaccination), being 53% higher in males and increasing exponentially with age. Among 9578 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 in the SCOURGE study, we found 133 cases (1.42%) with detectable clonal mosaicism for chromosome alterations (mCA) and 226 males (5.08%) with acquired loss of chromosome Y (LOY). Individuals with clonal mosaic events (mCA and/or LOY) showed a 54% increase in the risk of COVID-19 lethality. LOY is associated with transcriptomic biomarkers of immune dysfunction, pro-coagulation activity and cardiovascular risk. Interferon-induced genes involved in the initial immune response to SARS-CoV-2 are also down-regulated in LOY. Thus, mCA and LOY underlie at least part of the sex-biased severity and mortality of COVID-19 in aging patients. Given its potential therapeutic and prognostic relevance, evaluation of clonal mosaicism should be implemented as biomarker of COVID-19 severity in elderly people. Among 9578 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 in the SCOURGE study, individuals with clonal mosaic events (clonal mosaicism for chromosome alterations and/or loss of chromosome Y) showed an increased risk of COVID-19 lethality

Global, regional, and national age-sex-specific mortality for 282 causes of death in 195 countries and territories, 1980-2017 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Background Global development goals increasingly rely on country-specific estimates for benchmarking a nation's progress. To meet this need, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2016 estimated global, regional, national, and, for selected locations, subnational cause-specific mortality beginning in the year 1980. Here we report an update to that study, making use of newly available data and improved methods. GBD 2017 provides a comprehensive assessment of cause-specific mortality for 282 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1980 to 2017. Methods The causes of death database is composed of vital registration (VR), verbal autopsy (VA), registry, survey, police, and surveillance data. GBD 2017 added ten VA studies, 127 country-years of VR data, 502 cancer-registry country-years, and an additional surveillance country-year. Expansions of the GBD cause of death hierarchy resulted in 18 additional causes estimated for GBD 2017. Newly available data led to subnational estimates for five additional countries Ethiopia, Iran, New Zealand, Norway, and Russia. Deaths assigned International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes for non-specific, implausible, or intermediate causes of death were reassigned to underlying causes by redistribution algorithms that were incorporated into uncertainty estimation. We used statistical modelling tools developed for GBD, including the Cause of Death Ensemble model (CODErn), to generate cause fractions and cause specific death rates for each location, year, age, and sex. Instead of using UN estimates as in previous versions, GBD 2017 independently estimated population size and fertility rate for all locations. Years of life lost (YLLs) were then calculated as the sum of each death multiplied by the standard life expectancy at each age. All rates reported here are age-standardised. Findings At the broadest grouping of causes of death (Level 1), non-communicable diseases (NC Ds) comprised the greatest fraction of deaths, contributing to 73.4% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 72.5-74.1) of total deaths in 2017, while communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional (CMNN) causes accounted for 186% (17.9-19.6), and injuries 8.0% (7.7-8.2). Total numbers of deaths from NCD causes increased from 2007 to 2017 by 22.7% (21.5-23.9), representing an additional 7.61 million (7. 20-8.01) deaths estimated in 2017 versus 2007. The death rate from NCDs decreased globally by 7.9% (7.08.8). The number of deaths for CMNN causes decreased by 222% (20.0-24.0) and the death rate by 31.8% (30.1-33.3). Total deaths from injuries increased by 2.3% (0-5-4-0) between 2007 and 2017, and the death rate from injuries decreased by 13.7% (12.2-15.1) to 57.9 deaths (55.9-59.2) per 100 000 in 2017. Deaths from substance use disorders also increased, rising from 284 000 deaths (268 000-289 000) globally in 2007 to 352 000 (334 000-363 000) in 2017. Between 2007 and 2017, total deaths from conflict and terrorism increased by 118.0% (88.8-148.6). A greater reduction in total deaths and death rates was observed for some CMNN causes among children younger than 5 years than for older adults, such as a 36.4% (32.2-40.6) reduction in deaths from lower respiratory infections for children younger than 5 years compared with a 33.6% (31.2-36.1) increase in adults older than 70 years. Globally, the number of deaths was greater for men than for women at most ages in 2017, except at ages older than 85 years. Trends in global YLLs reflect an epidemiological transition, with decreases in total YLLs from enteric infections, respirator}, infections and tuberculosis, and maternal and neonatal disorders between 1990 and 2017; these were generally greater in magnitude at the lowest levels of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI). At the same time, there were large increases in YLLs from neoplasms and cardiovascular diseases. YLL rates decreased across the five leading Level 2 causes in all SDI quintiles. The leading causes of YLLs in 1990 neonatal disorders, lower respiratory infections, and diarrhoeal diseases were ranked second, fourth, and fifth, in 2017. Meanwhile, estimated YLLs increased for ischaemic heart disease (ranked first in 2017) and stroke (ranked third), even though YLL rates decreased. Population growth contributed to increased total deaths across the 20 leading Level 2 causes of mortality between 2007 and 2017. Decreases in the cause-specific mortality rate reduced the effect of population growth for all but three causes: substance use disorders, neurological disorders, and skin and subcutaneous diseases. Interpretation Improvements in global health have been unevenly distributed among populations. Deaths due to injuries, substance use disorders, armed conflict and terrorism, neoplasms, and cardiovascular disease are expanding threats to global health. For causes of death such as lower respiratory and enteric infections, more rapid progress occurred for children than for the oldest adults, and there is continuing disparity in mortality rates by sex across age groups. Reductions in the death rate of some common diseases are themselves slowing or have ceased, primarily for NCDs, and the death rate for selected causes has increased in the past decade. Copyright (C) 2018 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Profesorado : revista de curriculum y formación del profesorado

Resumen basado en el de la publicaciónMonográfico con el título: "Entre libros de texto impresos y libros de texto digitales : debates y desafíos"Se analiza el sentido y las funciones que debieran asumir las bibliotecas escolares en el marco de una escuela donde tecnologías, recursos educativos online y libros digitales empiezan a sustituir y/o complementar a los materiales didácticos impresos, especialmente los libros de texto, en las prácticas docentes. Estructurado en seis apartados, primero se aborda el proceso de tránsito de la cultura impresa a la digital y el papel que tradicionalmente han jugado las bibliotecas escolares. Se plantea la crisis del modelo de escolaridad basado en el texto escolar describiéndose posteriormente los principales rasgos de los nuevos recursos educativos digitales. En los siguientes apartados se enumeran algunos de los desafíos actuales de las bibliotecas escolares identificándose tres tipos o modelos de bibliotecas escolares (la tradicional, la digital y el CREA), proponiéndose un modelo integrado de biblioteca escolar. Se concluye que las bibliotecas escolares deben reimaginarse para continuar siendo un relevante espacio educativo en el marco de la escuela del siglo XXI.ES