Trends of e-government research: contextualization and research opportunities

E-Government is a broad research field in which researchers are currently involved in a range of different research projects. Our purpose in this paper is to assist researchers in the development and direction of future analyses, identifying trends in terms of research and the methodology used. Universities and departments that make the main scientific contributions are identified, in order to locate and contextualize the research carried out into e-Government and to enhance intercommunication among researchers and thus knowledge in this field. To achieve this goal, we examined periodical publications listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in the fields of Public Administration and Information Science, during the period 2000-2009. Knowledge gaps and research opportunities have been derived, highlighting the need to use quantitative methodologies and to identify key factors to promote a theoretical framework to enhance the efficient implementation of e-Government, as well as identification the main universities where the researchers can complete their doctoral academic training

Financial determinants for improving public sector accountability: a meta-analytic study

The economic crisis has highlighted the need to pay close attention to the disclosure of financial information by public administration institutions; this is an element contributing to the control, accountability and responsibility and thus to achieving greater financial stability and sustainability. Although the disclosure of public financial information has traditionally been linked with financial variables, previous researches in this respect have been somewhat inconsistent in their findings, and conclusive evidence has yet to be provided regarding these factors and their influence on the level of disclosure. The present meta-analysis tries to reveal the existence of a statistically significant association between certain financial variables and the disclosure of public financial information, although the strength and sign of this association will depend on the context under analysis. The results obtained indicate that, depending on the context in which public managers are operating, they may have different attitudes toward the disclosure of public financial information; the medium employed for the dissemination and public indebtedness are also significant factors to this disclosure. Therefore, results reveal a variable degree of predisposition among public managers to adopt policies aimed at increasing the disclosure of public financial information

Estudio sobre peligro aviario: Análisis del riesgo de impactos entre aves y aeronaves en el Aeropuerto Internacional Augusto C. Sandino, Managua, Nicaragua

El peligro aviario es el riesgo de coliciones entre aves y aeronaves. Para reducir ese peligro es necesario entender la naturaleza de las aves que habitan dentro y alrededor del aeropuerto y clasificarlas numericamente en base a la peligrosidad que representan, conociendo a la vez las estaciones del año, los meses del año, horas del día, condiciones climáticas, focos de atracción (cobertura, alimentación y agua) que incrementan la abundancia y la riqueza de aves en las áreas aeroportuarias. Para obtener la información se seleccionaron dos sitios de observación: uno en las áreas verdes alrededor de la pista de aterrizaje, con el objetivo de registrar las especies de aves hacen uso de este sitio permanente o temporalmente, y otro en la torre de control, para determinar rutas de aves de mayor peso, gregarias y de alto vuelo en un radio de 3000 m con centro en la torre de control. Las especies observadas con mayor frecuencia en la pista de aterrizaje fueron: Hirundo rustica, Quiscalus mexicanus, Molothrus aeneus, Columbina talpacoti y Columba livia. Desde la torre de control se observaron con mayor frecuencia: Coragyps atratus, Zenaida asiatica, Molotrus aeneus y Quiscalus mexicanus. En la pista de aterrizaje y desde la torre de control la abundancia y riqueza de aves no varió significativamente a lo largo dlos meses del año. En la pista de aterrizaje la abundancia incrementa significativamente en el período seco en horarios de 06:00-07:00 am, principalmente por la presencia de Q. mexicanus y H. rustica. La riqueza en el periodo seco y la abundancia y riqueza en el período lluvioso no varió significativamente. Desde la torre de control no se registraron incrementos significativos de la abundancia y riqueza de aves en el período seco, pero si de la abundancia en el período lluvioso, con alzas a las 11:00 y 13:00, principalmente por la mayores actividades de la especie C. atratus a esas horas. La abundancia de aves en la pista de aterrizaje dependió de las condiciones climáticas, aumentando al aumentar la precipitación y la nubosidad y reduciéndose al aumentar la velocidad del viento y la temperatura. La actividad de las aves observadas desde la torre de control no varió significativamente con las variaciones climáticas diarias. Las especies que hacen mayor uso del enmallado perimetral del aeropuerto para perchar fueron: Passers domesticus, Columbina talpacoti, Tyrannus melancholicus, Crotophaga sulcirostris y Tyrannus forficatus. Los sitios preferidos para anidación dentro del aeropuerto fueron árboles de Almendra ( Terminalia catapa ), Mango ( Manguifera indica ) y dentro del las instalacones del cuerpo de Bomberos, torre de control y los hangares. Se concluye que C. atratus y Q. mexicanus son las especies que más peligro representan para la aviación, seguidas en menor escala de C. livia , C. talpocati, H. rustica y M. aeneus. Los sectores norte, oeste y una parte del sector sur del aeropuerto son áreas de mayor riesgo aviario por una mayor frecuencia de observación de C. atratus en esa zona. La especie Q. mexicanus esta distribuida principalmente en el sector sureste. Las fuentes de atracción para las aves van desde sitios ideales para hábitat, refugio, anidación y perchaje hasta fuente de alimentos que incluyen vegetales, insectos, vertebrados, basureros y mataderos

The transformation of the Andalusian fortress of Taibilla into a feudal border castle

[EN] In this paper, we will study the fortress of Taibilla, a defensive complex built by the Order of Santiago in the middle of the thirteenth century in a strategic point of the Sierra de Segura, currently belonging to the municipality of Nerpio (Albacete). Although the complex was built at the top of the hill on whose hillside a relatively important town existed in Andalusian times, the archaeological excavations proved that most of the remains of the fortification currently visible were built after the Christian conquest. It is a stately castle and the outer enclosure that protected the Christian town, both of notable importance since they were destined to accommodate a comendador and a council respectively. The Encomienda de Taibilla, however, disappeared within a few years due to the avatars of the border, leaving its territory incorporated to that of Yeste. For this reason, the fortress of Taibilla hardly underwent modifications in the medieval period, so that it has been fossilized as an excellent example of the santiaguista stately architecture of the middle of the thirteenth century.Jiménez Castillo, P.; Muñoz López, F. (2020). La transformación del ḥiṣn andalusí de Ṭaybāliya en un castillo san-tiaguista de frontera. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 95-104. https://doi.org/10.4995/FORTMED2020.2020.114749510

Experience with the use of Rituximab for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis in a tertiary Hospital in Spain: RITAR study

There is evidence supporting that there are no relevant clinical differences between dosing rituximab 1000 mg or 2000 mg per cycle in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients in clinical trials, and low-dose cycles seem to have a better safety profile. Our objective was to describe the pattern of use of rituximab in real-life practice conditions. Methods: Rituximab for RA in clinical practice (RITAR) study is a retrospective cohort study from 2005 to 2015. Eligibility criteria were RA adults treated with rituximab for active articular disease. Response duration was the main outcome defined as months elapsed from the date of rituximab first infusion to the date of flare. A multivariable analysis was performed to determine the variables associated with response duration. Results: A total of 114 patients and 409 cycles were described, 93.0% seropositive and 80.7% women. Rituximab was mainly used as second-line biological therapy. On demand retreatment was used in 94.6% of cases versus fixed 6 months retreatment in 5.4%. Median response duration to on demand rituximab cycles was 10 months (interquartile range, 7–13). Multivariable analysis showed that age older than 65 years, number of rituximab cycles, seropositivity, and first- or second-line therapy were associated with longer response duration. The dose administered at each cycle was not significantly associated with response duration. Conclusions: Our experience suggests that 1000 mg rituximab single infusion on demand is a reasonable schedule for long-term treatment of those patients with good response after the first cycles, especially in seropositive patients and when it is applied as a first- or second-line biological therap

An INT‐based packet loss monitoring system for data center networks implementing Fine‐Grained Multi‐Path routing

In-band network telemetry (INT) is a newer network measurement technology that uses normal data packets to collect network information hop-by-hop with low overhead. Since incomplete telemetry data seriously degrades the performance of upper-layer network telemetry applications, it is necessary to consider the own INT packet loss. In response, LossSight, a powerful packet loss monitoring system for INT has been designed, implemented, and made available as open-source. This letter extends the previous work by proposing, implementing, and evaluating LB-LossSight, an improved version compatible with packet-level load-balancing techniques, which are currently used in modern Data Center Networks. Experimental results in a Clos network, one of the most commonly used topologies in today's data centers, confirm the high detection and localization accuracy of the implemented solution.Spanish State Research Agency (AEI), under project grant AriSe2: FINe, (Ref.PID2020-116329GB-C22 founded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the project (Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province under Grant No. ZR2020LZH010)

Empirical Analysis of Ethical Principles Applied to Different AI Uses Cases

In this paper, we present an empirical study on the perception of the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence groups in the classification made by the European Union (EU). The study seeks to identify the ethical principles that cause the greatest concern among the population, analyzing these characteristics among different actors. The main study analyses the difference between Information and Communications Technology (ICT) professionals and the rest of the population. Along with this study, we conducted a gender study; in addition, we studied differences between university students, classified as future professionals who can work in Artificial Intelligence, and other university students. We believe that this work is a starting point for an informed debate in the scientific community and industry on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence based on the classification of ethical principles made by the EU, which can be extrapolated to any analysis carried out on the use of data to apply them in algorithms based on Artificial Intelligence

Socio-economic factors do also matter: comments on the article "can climatic factors explain the differences in COVID-19 incidence and severity across the SPANISH regions?: an ecological study"

Phosri et al., commented on our previous study about the influence of climate variables at the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Spain. They showed the impact of the association of gross domestic product (GDP) with the cumulative COVID-19 incidence per 105 inhabitants in our country and the rise of several methodologic issues. Here we discussed the main advantages and disadvantages of ecological studies and we advocate to test the hypothesis created in this type of studies using individual-level research designs

Can climatic factors explain the differences in COVID-19 incidence and severity across the Spanish regions?: An ecological study

Background: Environmental factors play a central role in seasonal epidemics. SARS-CoV-2 infection in Spain has shown a heterogeneous geographical pattern This study aimed to assess the influence of several climatic factors on the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 and the severity of COVID-19 among the Spanish Autonomous Communities (AA.CC.). Methods: Data on coronavirus infectivity and severity of COVID-19 disease, as well as the climatic variables were obtained from official sources (Ministry of Health and Spanish Meteorological Agency, respectively). To assess the possible influence of climate on the development of the disease, data on ultraviolet radiation (UVR) were collected during the months before the start of the pandemic. To analyze its influence on the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2, data on UVR, temperature, and humidity were obtained from the months of highest contagiousness to the peak of the pandemic. Results: From October 2019 to January 2020, mean UVR was significantly related not only to SARS-CoV-2 infection (cumulative incidence -previous 14 days- × 105 habitants, rho = - 0.0,666; p = 0.009), but also with COVID-19 severity, assessed as hospital admissions (rho = - 0.626; p = 0.017) and ICU admissions (rho = - 0.565; p = 0.035). Besides, temperature (February: rho = - 0.832; p < 0.001 and March: rho = - 0.904; p < 0.001), was the main climatic factor responsible for the infectivity of the coronavirus and directly contributed to a different spread of SARS-CoV-2 across the Spanish regions. Conclusions: Climatic factors may partially explain the differences in COVID-19 incidence and severity across the different Spanish regions. The knowledge of these factors could help to develop preventive and public health actions against upcoming outbreaks of the disease

Lipomas profundos

Se han revisado retrospectivamente 10 lipomas profundos localizados en los miembros. Todos los pacientes fueron intervenidos quirúrgicamente y el diagnóstico de certeza fue histopatológico. Siete de los casos eran lipomas intra o intermusculares y los restantes angiolipoma, hibernoma y fibrolipoma intraneural, respectivamente. El seguimiento medio postoperatorio fue de 48 meses (mínimo: 14, y máximo: 84). No ha habido recidiva en ningún caso.This article is a retrospective review of 10 deep lipomata localized in the limbs. In all the cases the treatment required surgery, and the diagnosis was made by histopathological analysis. Seven cases were intra or intermuscular lipomata, and the other three were angiolipoma, hibernoma and endoneural fibrolipoma. The average postoperative follow-up time was 48 months (14 min-84 max). None showed recurrence at review