Household Food Security as a Complex System—Contributions to the Social Sciences from the Cuban Perspective during a Pandemic

The food crisis caused by the rise in grocery prices affects many countries. Added to this complex panorama is the current health situation generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Its impact on the productive sector will be detrimental to many household incomes and food practices. The social sciences need to adopt a complex understanding of household food security (HFS) as a dynamic process of building collective nutritional knowledge and eating habits. In the case of Cuba, the burden on the agrifood system is the result of external and internal factors that affect household food sustainability. This paper, therefore, seeks to assess the social construction of HFS as a complex system in the current pandemic scenario using the municipality of Santiago de Cuba as a case study. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used. The main results obtained focus on the role played by women in food use and distribution, and the effect of food vulnerability on HFS. These results provide an analytical model for the study of the new and diverse household-food-security configurations that are emergingThis publication was made with the financing and support of the CIPHC

Desarrollo y validación del Cuestionario de Clima Escolar para Profesores de Secundaria y Bachillerato (CES-PSB)

The present study focuses on the development and initial validation of a measure of school climate based on teachers’ perceptions. The measure was developed to integrate those aspects of the school climate highlighted in the existing literature and that proved relevant for teachers’ efficacy, including the school goal structure. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on a sample of 581 high school teachers. Results showed that a seven-correlated factor structure better represented the data, in comparison with a second-order model and a bifactor model. Structural equation modeling techniques provided evidence of the concurrent validity through correlations with a criterion measure of teacher job satisfaction. School goal structure proved to be an important aspect of school climate substantially related to other school climate factors such as school management quality and relationships among teachers. These findings provided some empirical support for the use of the questionnaire in schools, especially for those interested in articulating interventions aimed at improving the learning environment through the seven school climate dimensions addressed.El presente estudio se centra en el desarrollo y validación inicial de una medida del clima escolar basada en las percepciones de los profesores. La medida fue desarrollada para integrar aquellos aspectos del clima escolar destacados en la literatura existente, incluyendo la estructura de metas escolar. Se realizaron análisis factoriales exploratorios y confirmatorios con una muestra de 581 profesores de secundaria y bachillerato. El uso de modelos de ecuaciones estructurales proporcionó evidencia sobre la validez concurrente a través de correlaciones con una medida criterio sobre la satisfacción laboral de los profesores. La estructura de metas escolar demostró ser un aspecto relevante del clima escolar relacionado sustancialmente con otros factores del clima escolar tales como la calidad del liderazgo y de las relaciones entre profesores. Estos resultados proporcionaron cierto apoyo empírico para el uso del cuestionario propuesto entre las escuelas, especialmente en aquellas interesadas en articular intervenciones encaminadas a mejorar el entorno de aprendizaje a través de las siete dimensiones del clima escolar abordadas

3D printed telescopes: an interesting tool for teaching Astronomy, Science and Technology

3D printing technologies experienced a huge evolution both in techniques and applications since its invention in the early 1980s. Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) was the first term used to describe an additive manufacturing technique and from that point on, many different ways of 3D printing have been developed to fulfil a variety of needs. Nowadays, 3D printing has become more accessible to the general public because of the big drop in prices caused by the big technical developments. As a result of that, a community of “makers” has been taking shape internationally making access to designs and advice easier. 3D printing is without a doubt one of the key developments of the last decades and covers from highly technical research fields (like medicine-related investigations) to individual makers or even educational programs to encourage young people to create. As a result of that, it can be seen daily that the so-called 3D printing has gained a big amount of fame between fabrication processes for its accessibility and ease of use, it only takes a computer, a 3D printer and time. On behalf of that, an idea for a final degree thesis was proposed: designing and printing using fused deposition modelling a telescope for astronomical and educational purposes. The main goal of the project is to, first check the capabilities of the 3D printing technology to build telescopes for amateur astronomers, comparing its performance with the current commercial products, and secondly, to develop a set of educational resources that permit the easy construction of low-cost custom instruments for the teaching and diffusion of Astronomy and Space Science. The set of resources derived from this project will be an interesting tool for Astronomy beginners, Engineering and Science students, teachers, and makers. In this work, we summarise the current status of the project and the results obtained with the first built prototype, as well as the design and choices made to fulfil our needs in a practical and feasible way. Last but not least, a list of possible educational activities to be carried out with the developed resources will be exposed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Preanalytical errors: the professionals’ perspective

This study was aimed at understanding the perspective on preanalytical errors from the point of view of the professionals involved in the preanalytical process. A significant contribution of their specialized knowledge and experience in day-to-day practice for identifying these kinds of mistakes, and their most frequent causes, was expected.It seems evident that weaknesses and threats are closely related to institutional organization aspects and the same is true for positive elements (strengths and opportunities). There is also an important appreciation of the staff’s implication. Staff´s opinions should be taken into account by institution managers, as they offer an approach that is different and complementary to the one traditionally applied, which is purely managerial and therefore not sufficient. The results should be complemented with more updated information. Multidisciplinary cooperation must involve not only professionals from different fields but also with different roles, i.e., managers, in order to obtain results that can be used to improve healthcare, save costs and to guarantee patient’s safety. We will continue with this research line investigating the same questions among primary care staff, in order to assess “the other side of the coin” of this problem.This study was partially supported by project Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias (FIS) grant PIFIS 1099/12 from “Instituto de Salud Carlos III” Ministerio de Sanidad y Política Social. Gobierno de España. (Health Ministry, Spanish Government).Yes2015-04-0

A Clustering-Based Hybrid Support Vector Regression Model to Predict Container Volume at Seaport Sanitary Facilities

An accurate prediction of freight volume at the sanitary facilities of seaports is a key factor to improve planning operations and resource allocation. This study proposes a hybrid approach to forecast container volume at the sanitary facilities of a seaport. The methodology consists of a three-step procedure, combining the strengths of linear and non-linear models and the capability of a clustering technique. First, a self-organizing map (SOM) is used to decompose the time series into smaller clusters easier to predict. Second, a seasonal autoregressive integrated moving averages (SARIMA) model is applied in each cluster in order to obtain predicted values and residuals of each cluster. These values are finally used as inputs of a support vector regression (SVR) model together with the historical data of the cluster. The final prediction result integrates the prediction results of each cluster. The experimental results showed that the proposed model provided accurate prediction results and outperforms the rest of the models tested. The proposed model can be used as an automatic decision-making tool by seaport management due to its capacity to plan resources in advance, avoiding congestion and time delays

Actualización cartográfica geológica en el sector suroeste del complejo volcánico Momotombo y sus alrededores a escala 1:40,000

El sitio de estudio se encuentra localizado al SW del complejo volcánico Momotombo, en el municipio de La Paz Centro del departamento de León. El área Cartografiada está situada dentro de la cordillera volcánica de los Maribios que durante el transcurso del tiempo ha venido evolucionando por su continua actividad volcanotectónica, lo cual ha generado cambios en su morfología teniendo como actual centro de emisión el Volcán Momotombo, pero anteriormente los materiales en este sitio se vinculan a antiguas calderas volcánicas que están en el área adyacente.Desde el punto de vista geológico se lograron definir tres unidades litológicas principales en el área de estudio. Las que se definen a continuación como: Unidad I: Flujos piroclásticos Unidad II: Material volcánico de caída y Unidad III: Depósitos aluviales y fluviales.El sitio de estudio está definido por cuatro unidades geomorfológicas las cuales se definieron de la siguiente manera: l. Unidad de calderas, ll. Unidad de conos cineríticos. lll. Unidad de cerros y colinas. lV. Unidad de planicies. La geomorfología del área de estudio está controlada por los procesos endógenos y exógenos, así mismo por procesos antropogénicos. Estructuralmente el área se encuentra dentro del graben de Nicaragua, según diversos autores la depresión nicaragüense es considerada como un graben que está delimitado por una serie de fallas de tipo extensionales entre las que sobresale la falla Mateare, se establecieron tres fases de deformación, la primera fase consiste en fracturas paralelas con esfuerzos principales en dirección NW-SE localizado camino hacia lago Xolotlán , la segunda fase consiste en un sistema de fracturas en el piso con esfuerzos principales en dirección NW-SE localizados en la cercanías del lago Xolotlán (Finca San Cristóbal) y por último la tercera fase de deformación se atribuye a sistema de fracturas conjugadas con dirección NE-SW encontradas en el rio que se ubica camino a las palma

Air pollution relevance analysis in the bay of Algeciras (Spain)

The aim of this work is to accomplish an in-depth analysis of the air pollution in the two main cities of the Bay of Algeciras (Spain). A large database of air pollutant concentrations and weather measurements were collected using a monitoring network installed throughout the region from the period of 2010-2015. The concentration parameters contain nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and particulate matter (PM10). The analysis was developed in two monitoring stations (Algeciras and La Linea). The higher average concentration values were obtained in Algeciras for NO2 (28.850 mu g/m(3)) and SO2 (11.966 mu g/m(3)), and in La Linea for PM10 (30.745 mu g/m(3)). The analysis shows patterns that coincide with human activity. One of the goals of this work is to develop a useful virtual sensor capable of achieving a more robust monitoring network, which can be used, for instance, in the case of missing data. By means of trends analysis, groups of equivalent stations were determined, implying that the values of one station could be substituted for those in the equivalent station in case of failure (e.g., SO2 weekly trends in Algeciras and Los Barrios show equivalence). On the other hand, a calculation of relative risks was developed showing that relative humidity, wind speed and wind direction produce an increase in the risk of higher pollutant concentrations. Besides, obtained results showed that wind speed and wind direction are the most important variables in the distribution of particles. The results obtained may allow administrations or citizens to support decisions

Artificial Neural Networks, Sequence-to-Sequence LSTMs, and Exogenous Variables as Analytical Tools for NO2 (Air Pollution) Forecasting: A Case Study in the Bay of Algeciras (Spain)

This study aims to produce accurate predictions of the NO2 concentrations at a specific station of a monitoring network located in the Bay of Algeciras (Spain). Artificial neural networks (ANNs) and sequence-to-sequence long short-term memory networks (LSTMs) were used to create the forecasting models. Additionally, a new prediction method was proposed combining LSTMs using a rolling window scheme with a cross-validation procedure for time series (LSTM-CVT). Two different strategies were followed regarding the input variables: using NO2 from the station or employing NO2 and other pollutants data from any station of the network plus meteorological variables. The ANN and LSTM-CVT exogenous models used lagged datasets of different window sizes. Several feature ranking methods were used to select the top lagged variables and include them in the final exogenous datasets. Prediction horizons of t + 1, t + 4 and t + 8 were employed. The exogenous variables inclusion enhanced the model's performance, especially for t + 4 (rho approximate to 0.68 to rho approximate to 0.74) and t + 8 (rho approximate to 0.59 to rho approximate to 0.66). The proposed LSTM-CVT method delivered promising results as the best performing models per prediction horizon employed this new methodology. Additionally, per each parameter combination, it obtained lower error values than ANNs in 85% of the cases