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Access to physical study rooms to libraries were restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic declaration. The mandatory confinement and growth experienced on streaming platforms such as Twitch and Discord generated the proliferation of online study rooms. This article presents an exploratory descriptive study as a contribution to the literature on study rooms on streaming platforms. The results reveal that (i) most users discovered online study rooms through their social networks and the increase in users has been progressive since the beginning of the pandemic;(ii) studying is the main activity participants perform during these live transmissions;(iii) survey participants indicated that their productivity, motivation, and concentration increases when using online study rooms. Education is constantly evolving;therefore, the characterization and analysis of this new phenomenon can contribute to the improvement of teaching and learning processes in the face of a pandemic and post-pandemic landscape. © 2023 IEEE.
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Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic had far-reaching effects on the dynamics of family interactions that will continue to evolve in the years to come. The objective of the research was to determine the impact of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on the intrafamily relationships of social science students at the National University of the Center of Peru. The study had a quantitative approach and a non-experimental, longitudinal panel design that measured two moments, before and during the pandemic;373 students from a population of 1,327 were taken as a probabilistic sample, to whom the Intrafamily Relationships Questionnaire, designed and validated for the study, was applied. As a result, it was found that the pandemic had a significant impact on the intrafamily relationships of the sample, positively increasing the dimensions of union and support (from 40.5% to 60.3%) and expression (from 11.3% to 50.9%), and increased with negative effects on the difficulties dimension (from 34.9% to 54.4%). In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown had a significant impact on the intra-family relationships of the population studied, improving expression, union and support;it also increased the difficulties with negative effects, especially economic ones. © 2022, Associacao Iberica de Sistemas e Tecnologias de Informacao. All rights reserved.
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BACKGROUND The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Hispanic population resulted in the almost complete elimination of the long-standing Hispanic mortality advantage relative to the non-Hispanic White population. However, it is unknown how COVID-19 mortality affected the diverse Hispanic subpopulations. OBJECTIVE We estimate life expectancy at birth in 2019 and 2020 by select Hispanic country/region of origin and explore how changes in age-specific all-cause and COVID-19 mortality affected changes in life expectancy between 2019 and 2020 for each group. METHODS We use final 2019 and 2020 mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics and population estimates based on the 2019 and 2020 American Community Survey. We calculate life tables and apply decomposition techniques to explore the effects of changes in age and cause-specific mortality on life expectancy. RESULTS Patterns of age and cause-specific excess deaths and their impact on declines in life expectancy due to the COVID-19 pandemic differed substantially by Hispanic subgroup. Life expectancy losses ranged from 0.6 to 6.7 years among males and from 0.6 to 3.6 years among females. CONCLUSIONS Our findings highlight the heterogeneous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic within the Hispanic population. © 2023,Demographic Research. All Rights Reserved.
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Guillain-Barré syndrome and its variants are among the neurological complications induced by SARS-CoV-2. A 49-year-old woman with COVID-19. After 14 days of presenting respiratory symptoms, she started with paresthesias, facial and limb weakness, dysphagia, ataxia, and respiratory failure. An unusual picture of overlapping Guillain-Barré and Miller Fisher syndromes was diagnosed. Nerve conduction study showed myelin damage. IgEV was used, recovery started one week after starting treatment. Guillain-Barré syndrome and its variants are a complication of COVID-19 whose diagnosis can become more complex in cases of unusual presentation where different clinical subtypes overlap. © 2022 Asociación Colombiana de Medicina Crítica y Cuidado lntensivo
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The health problem generated by COVID-19 unexpectedly accelerated some of the everyday aspects of our daily life where Information and Communication Technologies were not very involved, with this the introduction of tools in education was hastened which have denoted difficulties technical and technological services and technical resources that people use, another aggravating factor is inaccessible areas and economic problems, as positive aspects it can be highlighted that populations can change the way they carry out daily activities and that the will can much more than current problems, the good result in the teaching-learning process in Virtual Learning Environments (EVA) mainly requires the active participation of the student, so the teacher must try to develop activities that motivate the student to participate, to investigate and develop their learning autonomously, one of these activities is that of playful character that facilitates the internalization of students' knowledge in a fun way and generating significant experiences. This work was carried out with the main objective of analyzing the use of the gamification technique in the EVA for the Metropolitan District Educational Unit (UEDM) of Santo Domingo, applying a qualitative - quantitative research, which showed that motivational techniques are not used in teaching (gamification or gamification) that develop significant learning in students and that with the proper application of these resources, learning in the different actors would be enhanced.
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Background: People with depression, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and other psychiatric disorders suffer from fatigue, avolition, anergia, and other motivational dysfunctions, which can be highly treatment resistant. Animal tasks have been developed to measure effort-related choice, offering the option of high effort actions leading to more valued reinforcers vs. low effort/low reward activities. Such tasks are useful for preclinical studies related to drug development. Methods: A low effort bias can be induced in male and female rats by injection of the vesicular monoamine transport (VMAT-2) inhibitor tetrabenazine (TBZ), which induces depressive symptoms in people. Suppression of lever pressing is also induced by injections of pro-inflammatory cytokines, which provide an inflammatory challenge. These deficits can be reversed by drugs that are known dopamine transport (DAT) inhibitors, including lisdexamfetamine, methylphenidate, and GBR-12909. Because many drugs that block DAT act as major stimulants and produce undesirable side effects, there is a need to develop and characterize novel atypical DAT inhibitors with unique neurochemical profiles. Results: Recent studies have shown that novel atypical DAT inhibitors, including modafinil analogs, also can reverse motivational dysfunctions induced by TBZ and pro-inflammatory cytokines, and increase selection of high-effort activities involving physical effort. These compounds include modafinil, CE-123, CE-158, CT-005404, and others. Drugs that stimulate serotonin transmission are not effective in this regard. Conclusions: It is possible that this research will identify new avenues for drug treatment of effort-related motivational symptoms in humans, such as fatigue, avolition, anergia, and COVID-related fatigue. Funding Source: NIMH/NIH;Chronos Keywords: Anergia Fatigue, Avolition, Behavioral Activation and inhibition, Inflammatory Cytokines, Vesicular Monoamine Transporter 2 (VMAT2)
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Objective: to characterize the situation of railway workers regarding their beliefs and practices of occupational health care in the context of COVID-19. The "ASPO", decreed on 03/20/2020 in Argentina, recognizes public passenger transport as an essential service. Public transport systems are high-risk contexts since they transport large numbers of people in a confined space, with limited ventilation, many common contact surfaces and few possibilities of identifying people infected with coronavirus. Methodology: exploratory-descriptive, quantitative and observational design, with a standardized questionnaire of questions and specific indicators for data collection. The sampling by quotas that was made up of 459 participants from different railway lines. Results 81.4% consider that it is very possible/quite possible to become infected in their workplace, while the home is perceived as the place with the lowest risk of contagion (65.68%). The perception of the feeling of sustained tiredness/listlessness increased by 44%;that of bad mood / irritability / nervousness 46.8%;constant alertness 55.7%;fear of getting sick / dying 39.7%;appetite 40.1%;difficulty sleeping 35.9%;and sexual desire 16.6% while it decreased by 14.4%.
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Introduction: Health personnel linked to the care of patients confirmed with the COVID-19 are exposed to situations of sustained stress that require the maintenance and renewal of psychological resources for their coping, and although they have the skills to deal with the disease, the situation that emerges and its alarming epidemiological behavior justify the vulnerability. Objectives: Comment on aspects related to occupational health in health professionals in the context of the current epidemiological situation and provide recommendations for staff working in Cuban medical brigades in collaboration abroad. Material and method: A review of 25 updated bibliographies that included periodical publications of national and foreign authors indexed in different databases was carried out. Development: The pandemic exposes health professionals to psychosocial occupational risks. Some stressors during pandemic outbreaks have long-lasting effects. Recommendations have been published for the working population in order to preserve their mental health and in particular that of exposed personnel. Conclusions: Permanent access to updated scientific information from authorized and reliable sources, social support networks, obtaining self-help skills and professional advice are part of a set of psychosocial protective factors to enhance resources for coping with stress, preventing post-traumatic stress and the mental exhaustion of health personnel who work in Cuban medical missions in collaboration in different countries and who provide services to confirmed and/or suspected COVID-19 patients.
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The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the rolling out of online education worldwide, prompting the need to investigate the “new normal”. The aim of this study was to adapt, validate, confirm the viability of and assess an attitude towards online education scale for university students in the context of the pandemic. The quantitative research consisted of basic, descriptive-level research with a descriptive transversal design. The technique used was a survey with application of the abovementioned scale. The cross-cultural adaptation and translation of the Instrument to Measure University Students' Attitude towards E-learning developed by Mehra and Omidian (2012) was carried out by inverse translation and back translation. Due to the context, it was adjusted from 83 to 63 items, and compressibility was evaluated by means of a pilot test and information-gathering and paraphrasing by interviews with a sample of 50 university students. The content was validated with 16 experts, whose Aiken's V coefficients were higher than.85, and construct validation, with a sample of 6,852 university students from two regions in Peru, was between sufficient and excellent via Pearson's adjusted correlation coefficient. The reliability evaluation yielded a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of.96, equivalent to very reliable. The scale was graded into four levels: strong negative (63-126), weak negative (127-189), weak positive (190-252) and strong positive (253-315). In conclusion, we were able to successfully adapt, validate, confirm the reliability of and assess the attitude towards online education scale for university students in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, making it ideal for studies in Latin American scenarios. © 2021 University of Granada. All rights reserved.
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UNIANDES Quevedo University, as well as the higher education system, has been affected by the impact of COVID 19. This paper focuses on this problem by studying how the university has responded in the educational field to the teaching challenges involved in abruptly migrating to virtuality. The answer is the academic management model for migration to virtuality, which has allowed empowering teachers in the solution of the complex didactic and communicative problems that occur in technological training environments. Theoretical, empirical and mathematical statistical methods have been used for the research. The result has been supported by the teaching indicators achieved in the last two academic periods taught at the university.
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This research is conducted in order to obtain the impact of computer security processes in the members of UNIANDES-Quevedo in time of COVID 19, it is known that nationally the pandemic has forced several institutions to change their face-to-face mode by the virtual and so far no studies have been conducted on the effects on the level of computer security in the institution, which is why the study is proposed, the use of the computer technologies in all the aspects of the human daily life, has led to that the computer security is not only a concern of the big companies, with the pandemic that crosses the whole world many companies have been seen in the obligation to implement the telework in their companies remaining vulnerable before the lack of controls that allow them to protect themselves of not wished instructions. With an exploratory research, with descriptive information management, a field research was applied, with techniques such as interview and survey in order to investigate and obtain information of the systems implemented in UNIANDES in times of pandemic;determining the impact of security in the processes offered by UNIANDES.
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UNIANDES extension in Quevedo, through the department of outreach with the community, in the Systems career, incorporates its eighth semester students, to provide computer solutions in times of pandemic, in the Quevedo Municipal Educational Unit, when building mobile applications, in order to improve teaching processes between teachers and students in virtual mode. The applications were used and the results were satisfactory, with constant feedback and formative evaluations as a priority, in different subjects. In the construction of them, the teacher contributes with his didactic experience, the contents and evaluations. Of the five students of UNIANDES, they build a mobile application for five subjects, with all the suggestions of each teacher, the same ones that were used by 150 students, who in 90% of the proposed educational objectives were met. It is intended that for subsequent projects, academic units of the curriculum will be increased by subjects, if possible, for the six part-time periods of the school year.
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Hyperinflammation distinguishes COVID-19 patients who develop a slight disease or none, from those progressing to severe and critical conditions. CIGB-258 is a therapeutic option for the latter group of patients. This drug is an altered peptide ligand (APL) derived from the cellular stress protein 60 (HSP60). In preclinical models, this peptide developed anti-inflammatory effects and increased regulatory T cell (Treg) activity. Results from a phase I clinical trial with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients indicated that CIGB-258 was safe and reduced inflammation. The aim of this study was to examine specific biomarkers associated with hyperinflammation, some cytokines linked to the cytokine storm granzyme B and perforin in a cohort of COVID-19 patients treated with this peptide. All critically ill patients were under invasive mechanical ventilation and received the intravenous administration of 1 or 2 mg of CIGB-258 every 12 h. Seriously ill patients were treated with oxygen therapy receiving 1 mg of CIGB-258 every 12 h and all patients recovered from their severe condition. Biomarker levels associated with hyperinflammation, such as interleukin (IL)-6, IL-10, tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α), granzyme B, and perforin, significantly decreased during treatment. Furthermore, we studied the ability of CIGB-258 to induce Tregs in COVID-19 patients and found that Tregs were induced in all patients studied. Altogether, these results support the therapeutic potential of CIGB-258 for diseases associated with hyperinflammation. Clinical trial registry: RPCEC00000313.