Extended literature review about managing communication in a MNC for knowledge sharing between the headquarters and the subsidiaries

This paper presents an extended Literature Review about the management of communications in Multinational Corporations, specifically in knowledge sharing between the headquarters and the subsidiaries, an issue that remains a deep challenge to international business due to the uniqueness of cultural values within the exchange of information, and the improvements that a company implements through the interchange of knowledge (Rodrigues, 2009) -- Today, companies adapt to change, nor only because of the determinant role of communications due to the information technology revolution (Kalla, 2006) but to face the challenges that the international market sets, specifically in the decisive role of knowledge management as the firm’s competitive advantage to create and innovate services and products (Carlsson, 2003

II Workshop on Modeling and Simulation for Science and Engineering

II Workshop on Modeling and Simulation for Science and Engineering (II WMSSE) was a conference conducted at Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, in the city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, on September 24, 25 and 26, 2019. There, works in several topics of science, technology and engineering were presented. Specially, the participants of conference wanted to bring some solutions to the actual industrial requirements such as improvement and optimization of the heat transfer equipment, electronic devices, system control by mean of computational modeling. Also, dynamic system control was widely used for the prediction of power flow market, diffusion of bacteria in coffee production, stress concentration in industrial machines, analysis of population dynamics, model of hydrological and pluviometric networks, encryption for intercommunication of substation control centers, and others

Prevalencia de trematodes y factores de riesgo asociados con el ganado lechero en Colombia

This study was conducted to establish the prevalence and identify the risk factors associated with trematode infections in dairy cattle in the Boyacá Highlands, Colombia. Fecal samples collected from 300 randomly selected cattle were examined using a simple sedimentation technique for differential trematodes egg count. The animals were found shedding eggs of three groups of trematodes, namely Fasciola hepatica, Paramphistomum cervi and Cotylophoron cotylophorum. The specific prevalence of this trematodes were 11.6%, 9.3%, and 3.7% respectively. A substantial overlap was observed in the appearance of F. hepatica y P. cervi. The prevalence of the three trematodes identified in this study was significantly associated (p<0.05) with body condition and breed, while the prevalence of Fasciola hepatica and Paramphistomum cervi, was associated with age. The prevalence of the three main trematodes of importance for animal health with a high rate of mixed infection along with a poor body condition, suggests a substantial economic loss incurred due to reduced productivity of livestock in the study area.El estudio se llevó a cabo para establecer la prevalencia e identificar los factores de riesgo asociados con las infecciones por trematodes en ganado lechero de las tierras altas de Boyacá, Colombia. Las muestras fecales recogidas de 300 bovinos seleccionados al azar se examinaron utilizando una técnica de sedimentación simple para el recuento diferencial de huevos de trematodes. En el ganado estudiado fueron encontrados huevos de tres grupos de trematodes, a saber: Fasciola hepatica, Paramphistomum cervi y Cotylophoron cotylophorum. La prevalencia específica para estas tres especies fueron de 11,6%, 9,3% y 3,7% respectivamente. Se observó una superposición importante entre F. hepatica y P. cervi. La prevalencia de los tres trematodes identificados en este estudio se asoció significativamente (p<0,05) con la condición corporal y la raza, mientras que la prevalencia de Fasciola sp y Paramphistomum sp fue asociada con la edad. La prevalencia de los tres principales trematodes de importancia para la salud animal y la alta tasa de infección mixta, junto al deterioro de la condición corporal, determinan una pérdida económica sustancial debida a la reducción de la productividad del ganado en el área estudiada

Validación de un instrumento de medición de ambiente escolar para docentes Colombianos

Este estudio explora la validez y fiabilidad de un instrumento de medición del ambiente escolar suministrado a 3610 docentes de las Instituciones Educativas oficiales de la ciudad de Medellín – Colombia en 2011. El análisis factorial exploratorio multinivel permitió establecer que a través de 20 reactivos el instrumento evalúa cuatro dimensiones de ambiente escolar a nivel individual: comunicación de la Institución Educativa hacia los docentes y comunicación de los docentes hacia los padres, nivel de participación en las decisiones de la Institución Educativa, respeto-seguridad emocional y expectativas académicas. A nivel grupal, los mismos reactivos permiten medir una dimensión general de ambiente escolar. Por tanto, los resultados sugieren que el instrumento permite establecer diferencias entre Instituciones Educativas en términos de ambiente escolar.This study explores the validity and reliability of a school environment instrument supplied to 3160 teachers from Medellin – Colombia public schools in 2011. The multilevel factorial analysis allowed establishing that through 20 reactives, the instrument evaluates four school environment dimensions at individual level: communication from the school to the teachers and communication from the teachers to the parents, participation level into the school decisions, respect-emotional security and academic expectations. At the group level, the same reactives allowed measuring a general school environment dimension. Therefore, results suggested the instrument permits to establish differences between schools in school environment terms

Patient centred diagnosis: sharing diagnostic decisions with patients in clinical practice.

Patient centred diagnosis is best practised through shared decision making; an iterative dialogue between doctor and patient, whichrespects a patient’s needs, values, preferences, and circumstances. Shared decision making for diagnostic situations differs fundamentally from that for treatment decisions. This has important implications when considering its practical application. The nature of dialogue should be tailored to the specific diagnostic decision; scenarios with higher stakes or uncertainty usually require more detailed conversation

Choosing the right strategy to model longitudinal count data in Epidemiology: An application with CD4 cell counts

Background: Statistical models for analysis of correlated count data are important for answering epidemiological questions that involve taking individual count measurements repeatedly over time through the use of longitudinal studies. Conventional regression models for this type of data are inadequate, leading to improper conclusions and inference. An important application of longitudinal studies in Public Health is the evaluation and monitoring of patients with infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, to determine their health status, to verify the treatment effects, and to make prognosis concerning the evolution of the disease, including interdependencies of clinical manifestations. The purpose of this article is to characterize different statistical strategies for analysis of longitudinal count data, emphasizing how to choose the most suitable model for the data and how to interpret the results. Methods:We illustrate their applicability by evaluating the effect of associated factors on lymphocyte CD4+T cell count in HIV seropositive patients in Salvador/Bahia - Brazil. We describe Poisson and Negative Binomial models using multilevel (ML) approach and generalized estimations equations (GEE) for analysis of longitudinal count data. Results: It is worth noting that the interpretation of the results from ML and GEE differs and they should not be compared directly. Conclusion: We believe that the statistical methodology for analysis of longitudinal studies with correlated count data can be useful to address several important questions in public health, particularly by helping to monitor patients and checking the effectiveness of treatments

Feature extraction based on time-singularity multifractal spectrum distribution in intracardiac atrial fibrillation signals

El análisis de la dinámica no lineal de señales de Electrogramas Intracardiacos (EGM) ha sido propuesto como una herramienta para detectar sitios críticos de conducción eléctrica (ejm: rotores o múltiples frentes de onda) en fibrilación auricular (AF). Estudios previos han mostrado que el análisis multifractal puede ser de utilidad para detectar actividad crítica en la señal EGM. A pesar de esto, el análisis multifractal no considera la información temporal de la señal. Existe un nuevo formalismo matemático para superar esta limitación, el cual es llamado Distribución Tiempo-Singularidad del Espectro Multifractal (TS-MFSD), que involucra la variación en el tiempo del espectro. Este artículo describe una nueva metodología para calcular características a partir del TS-MFSD en señales EGM. Nosotros evaluamos los métodos descritos en una base de datos de EGM etiquetada por expertos en cuatro clases: no fragmentada, potenciales fragmentados discretos, actividad desorganizada y actividad continua. Para evaluar el rendimiento se calculó el área bajo la curva ROC. El mejor resultado de las características propuestas alcanzó un área bajo la curva ROC de 95.17% en la detección de señales con actividad continua. Este resultado supera los reportados mediante la utilización del análisis multifractal. Hasta donde sabemos, este es el primer trabajo que reporta la utilización de la TS-MFSD en señales biomédicas, y nuestros resultados sugieren que el análisis Tiempo-Singularidad tiene el potencial para estudiar el comportamiento no estacionario de las señales EGM en AF.Non-linear analysis of electrograms (EGM) has been proposed as a tool to detect critical conduction sites (e.g., rotors vortex, multiple wavefronts) in atrial fibrillation (AF). Likewise, studies have shown that multifractal analysis is useful to detect critical activity in EGM signals. However, the multifractal spectrum does not consider the temporal information. There is a new mathematical formalism to overcome this limitation: the time-singularity multifractal spectrum distribution (TS-MFSD), which involves the time variation of the spectrum. In this manuscript, we describe the methodology to compute the TS-MFSD from EGM signals. Moreover, we propose a methodology to extract features from time-singularity spectrum and from singularity energy spectrum (SES). We tested the features in an EGM database labeled by experts as: non-fragmented, discrete fragmented potentials, disorganized activity, and continuous activity. We tested the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The proposed features achieve an area under the ROC curve of 95.17% when detecting signals with continuous activity. These results outperform those reported using multifractal analysis. To our knowledge, this is the first work that report the use of TS-MFSD in biomedical signals and our findings suggest that time-singularity has the potential to be used in the study of non-stationary behavior of EGM signals in AF