ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic forced people and entities to adopt measures to protect themselves from contagion by resorting to the use of digital media, as was the case in banking. The purpose of this research was to determine the relationship between the quality of mobile banking service and consumer loyalty in Peru. The methodology was mixed approach. In the quantitative aspect, with a sample of 383 users of banking entities in Comas, Lima, a survey was applied, with a reliability of the instrument of 0.912. In the qualitative aspect, seven experts were interviewed whose opinions were contrasted with the theoretical information developed. The results of the survey indicated that there is a correlation with a preferred position with a tendency to be strong among the study variables (Spearman's Rho of 0.796). Likewise, the experts indicated that mobile banking has managed to retain the majority of users due to the speed and security of the service. In conclusion, it was evidenced that there is a preferential relationship with a tendency to be strong between the variables under study, based on a relative trust and security of the user, making it necessary to offer quality services using various communication mechanisms. © 2023, Universidad del Zulia. All rights reserved.
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This study focuses on anticipatory happiness during the week (current happiness but considering the rest of the week) in employees confined due to COVID-19. In Diary Study 1, 71 employees with home-based telework participated on five consecutive workdays (Monday-Friday). We found a quadratic change pattern with an acceleration of the increase in anticipatory happiness right before the weekend. Results also confirmed a positive association between daily variability in anticipatory happiness and daily fluctuations in job satisfaction and positive affect. In Diary Study 2, 83 employees who carried out an essential activity outside the home participated for two consecutive weeks. Our findings showed a cubic change pattern where anticipatory happiness reaches its highest average score on Friday, dropping sharply on Monday, and then the cycle (rhythm) begins again. Changes in anticipatory happiness were positively associated with changes in job satisfaction and positive affect, and negatively related to fluctuations in negative affect. © 2022 Colegio Oficial de Psicologos de Madrid. All rights reserved.
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Introduction: the COVID-19 pandemic generated a disruption in the modality of face-to-face education, forcing an abrupt migration to virtuality with little or no prior preparation, which makes it necessary to analyze the perception and satisfaction of teachers with the development of activities in this format. Objective: to analyze the perception and satisfaction with education in virtual modality during the COVID-19 pandemic of the teachers of the Nursing Degree of the University Institute of the Argentine Federal Police of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Methods: a descriptive, cross-sectional, and quantitative study was designed. The sample consisted of 23 teachers who responded to an instrument consisting of 21 questions with closed response options. Results: the mean age was 52 years (SD: 10), 87 % were women and 79,9 % have children, 56,5 % are teachers of third-year subjects of the curriculum and 56,5 % have a degree level of training. 65,2 % mentioned that in virtuality their main difficulty was the resistance of students to turn on their cameras and 43,5 % perceive the qualifications obtained in virtuality as equivalent to face-to-face. Those who possessed a postgraduate degree (p=0,005) and those who wished to continue virtual activities after isolation (p=0,041) were found to have higher levels of satisfaction. Conclusions: an average level of satisfaction was found with a score of 6.8 out of 10 and the perception of the virtual modality for the development of classes during the pandemic was positive. © 2023, Publicacion de la Asociacion Salud, Ciencia y Tecnologia. All rights reserved.
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Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted unevenly across nations and population groups. Older adults were considered a high-risk group because of their high susceptibility to infection and potential for clinical complications and death. Long periods of home confinement and social distancing foster changes in daily life that impact the mobility, health and quality of life of older adults. This study aims to assess the quality of life of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic, adherence to prevention measures, self-perceived impaired mobility, relating to others, daily activities, eating habits and constipation-patterns.
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This work presents a methodological structure to incorporate sports subjects in the curricular design in undergraduate courses at ESPOL, to offer integral education for the academic and professional development of the student. In this sense, the most relevant components that were applied in the implementation of sports subjects are described, ranging from the curricular reform process of 2016, the pedagogical technical training of teachers, the micro-curricular design, the carrying out of activities sports during the COVID-19 pandemic and opportunities for sports subjects to be considered in the training and measurement of learning outcomes. Finally, results related to the number of sports subjects offered, the number of teachers trained in technical pedagogical skills, the number of registered students, and the number of activities carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic are shown. © 2022 Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions. All rights reserved.
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Radiation therapy (RT) to doses of 24-30 Gy is used for the treatment of indolent B-cell lymphoma (BCL);however, significant acute and late ocular effects are common. We aimed to develop a response adapted (RA) strategy that maintains excellent disease outcomes but reduces orbital morbidity. We performed a phase II prospective study of a RA strategy in 50 patients (pts) with stage I-IV orbital indolent BCL. Pts were treated with ultra-low dose (ULD) RT to 4 Gy in 2 fractions and assessed in 3-month intervals for response. Pts with persistent orbital lymphoma were offered an additional 20 Gy in 10 fractions. Pts that had a complete response (CR) to ULD RT were observed. We also evaluated this treatment strategy in a separate 55 pt retrospective cohort. From July 2015-January 2021 51 pts were enrolled. Fifty evaluable pts had follow-up for study inclusion. The median age was 63 years (29-88);62% were female (n=31). Pts had MALT lymphoma (n=32, 64%), follicular lymphoma (FL, n=16, 32%) and low grade BCL (n=6, 12%). Most pts (62%, n=31) had stage I disease limited to one (n=28) or both (n=3) orbits. Pts had newly diagnosed (n=36, 72%);relapsed (n=9, 18%) and refractory lymphoma (n=5, 10%). At a median follow up of 35 months [95% CI 22.2 – 37.4], 90% of pts (n=45) experienced a CR to RA RT, including 44 pts that had a CR to ULD RT (median time to CR 3.4 months) and 1 pt that had a CR after an additional 20 Gy. No local recurrences were observed. Treatment was well tolerated with no grade ≥3 toxicity. Five pts did not have a CR to planned RA therapy including 1 pt that refused additional RT, one pt treated with rituximab, one pt that had a PR on initial evaluation but has not returned for subsequent in person evaluations due to COVID, one pt being observed with stable disease and a final pt that received an additional 20 Gy to the orbit that has a persistent stable mass after the 20 Gy. In a planned subset analysis of 26 pts with newly diagnosed stage 1 disease (MALT, n=22;FL, n=3;low grade BCL, n=1);92.3% (n=24) had a CR to RA RT, with one pt requiring an additional 20 Gy. For all 26 pts with newly diagnosed stage 1 disease, the 3-year freedom from distant relapse rate was 90.4% with 3 distant relapses (contralateral orbit, n=2;paratracheal nodes, n=1). The median follow-up among the 55 pts (MALT, n=38;FL, n=13;low grade B-cell lymphoma, n=4) treated in the retrospective cohort between March 2013 and October 2021 was 28.7 months (95% CI 21.2 - 36.1);98% (n=54) of pts had a CR with RA RT, including 2 pts with a CR after an additional 20 Gy. The remaining pt went on to receive systemic therapy in lieu of additional RT for persistent disease. Among the 54 pts that had a CR with RA RT there was one local relapse in a pt with conjunctival FL 27.8 months after experiencing a CR to ULD RT. This pt received 20 Gy with resolution of the locally relapsed disease. We observed excellent disease control with negligible toxicity in the first prospective study assessing this novel approach of RA ULD RT for pts with indolent B-cell lymphoma. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics is the property of Pergamon Press - An Imprint of Elsevier Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
The use of cloud computing for delivering application services over the Internet has gained rapid traction. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the work from home scheme and increased business presence online have created more demand for computing resources. Many enterprises and organizations are expanding their private data centres and utilizing hybrid or multi-cloud environments for their IT infrastructure. Because of the ever-increasing demand for computing resources, energy consumption and carbon emission have become a pressing issue. Renewable energy sources have been recognized as clean and sustainable alternatives to fossil-fuel based brown energy. However, due to the intermittent nature of availability of renewable energy sources, it brings many challenges to automatically and efficiently schedule tasks under renewable energy constraints and deadlines. Task scheduling with traditional heuristic algorithms are not able to adapt quickly with changing energy availability and stochastic task arrival. In this regard, this work aims at building a novel scheduling policy with deep reinforcement learning, which automatically applies scheduling techniques like workload shifting and cloud-bursting in a geographically distributed hybrid multi-cloud environment consists of multiple private and public clouds. Our primary goals are maximizing renewable energy utilization and avoiding deadline constraint violations. We also introduce user configurable hyper-parameters to enable multi-objective scheduling on cloud cost, makespan and utilization. Our experiment results show that the proposed scheduling approach can achieve the aforementioned objectives dynamically to varying renewable energy availability. © 2021 IEEE.
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Due to the pandemic, teleworking was considered as an option to continue the work rhythm. Objectives: To assess the influence of presence at work on the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Know the variables related to presence at work. Material and Methods: Prospective, descriptive, cross-sectional prevalence study. Variables: age, sex, weight, height, tobacco, comorbidities, flu vaccination, COVID-19 symptoms, contact, work modality. Carrying out rapid SARS-CoV-2 antibody test Results: The prevalence of workers is significantly related to: age, non-smoker, flu vaccine, suspicious symptoms, living with patients. Presence at work has been significantly related to: sex and smoker. The seroprevalence was higher in workers who did not go to their position compared to those who did always or occasionally. Conclusions: Teleworking does not seem to influence the reduction of seroprevalence due to Covid-19.The risk of contagion is lower at work than at the worker’s home. © 2021, Accion Medica S.A. All rights reserved.
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OBJECTIVE: The COVID-19 pandemic caused that the Health Department of the Autonomous Region of Madrid redirected the Obstetrics, Gynecology and Neonatology emergency care. On March 24th 2020, the HULP launched a program of postpartum early discharge and home visit. The objective of this work was to detect if the care strategy "Voluntary early discharge and home visit by the midwife (2nd year EIR)" applied by the HULP during the COVID-19 pandemic had any adverse effect on the woman and/or the newborn. METHODS: Cross-sectional observational descriptive study using convenience sampling among women included in the early discharge-home visit program from March 24th to May 5th 2020. 222 medical records and telephone surveys to postpartum women who complied with the inclusion criteria were analyzed. The statistical analysis was performed using SAS 9.4. RESULTS: The average of inpatient time was 25 hours and 15 minutes. 8.6% of newborns were sent back to the HULP, and 2.2% were readmitted for hyperbilirubinemia. 2.3% of parents took their infants to the Emergency Care Unit, but only 0.46% needed readmission. 0.4% of postpartum women were readmitted. At the discharge, 84.2% of newborns exclusively breastfed. After one week of the birth, 73.4% of infants were exclusively breastfeeding, 18% were mixed breastfeeding, and 8.6% were bottle feeding. 89.6% of women believed early discharge was appropriate. Home visit was described as "very satisfactory" in 83.3% of cases, and the care provided, in 88.7% of cases. CONCLUSIONS: With the early discharge-home visit program, continuity of care is provided, health problems were detected and resolved and high maternal satisfaction levels were obtained.
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Manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia can rapidly progress to acute respiratory failure and acute respiratory distress syndrome that should receive timely ventilatory support invasive mechanical ventilation. Barotrauma is a complication that should be considered in this type of patient due to the risk of worsening the clinical course, increasing mortality risk. The mechanism of how barotrauma occurs in COVID-19 patient is related to lung damage associated with mechanical ventilation and structural changes caused by COVID-19 complications. Worldwide evidence on therapeutic management on barotrauma in COVID-19 patient is limited. Clinical evolution should be monitored due to the possibility of cardiovascular and respiratory complications, which must be resolved in a timely manner. The objective of this review is to inform about the current knowledge described in literature of this complication in COVID-19 patients, its incidence, pathophysiology, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. Conclusions: Barotrauma presentation frequency increases in COVID-19 infected patients. Clinical manifestations can be nonspecific, so the diagnosis should have high suspicion. There is little evidence to date of pulmonary sequelae associated with barotrauma in these patients. © 2021, Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Respiratorias. All rights reserved.
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The impact of the pandemic caused by COVID-19 may deepen the situations of malnutrition, where it will be necessary to adapt food programs to this new context. The objective of this work was to present the methodology and the main results of the process of formulating a federal guide based on scientific evidence and adapted to the reality of the child and adolescent population that attend school canteens in the 24 jurisdictions of Argentina. It was observed that the modalities for the implementation of SC during the pandemic were: food modules (the most frequent);food modules delivered at school with regular SC support and, food and/or snacks delivered daily. There was little evidence at the global and regional level on specific recommendations applied to the implementation of SC, although recommendations on hygiene and food handling were found. Based on a participatory process among key actors, specific recommendations were obtained according to the dimensions of food and nutrition security (FNS). It is concluded that it is necessary to increase participatory experiences in the design of recommendations based on evidence, adapted to the territory and that assume a comprehensive approach from the dimensions of FNS. Arch Latinoam Nutr 2020;70(3): 215-234. © 2020 Archivos Latinoamericanos Nutricion. All rights reserved.
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Our aim was to evaluate the analytical and clinical performance of the SARS-CoV-2 molecular detection kits used in Argentina. Nine real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and three reverse-transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) assays were evaluated using the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended test as reference method. A secondary standard calibrated for the E, N and RdRp genes against the Pan American Health Organization-World Health Organization-International Standard was used to calculate the limit of detection (LoD). A panel of artificial clinical samples, 32 positive and 30 negative for SARS-CoV-2, were analyzed to estimate the kappa concordance (kappa) and the diagnostic performance. Differences among the LoD values for the target genes amplified by each kit were >1 log copies/reaction. The kappa for the RT-qPCR kits was greater than 0.9, whereas that for the RT-LAMP assays ranged from 0.75 to 0.93. The clinical performance of RT-qPCR kits showed 100% specificity and high sensitivity, although with variations according to the gene analyzed. The E and N genes provided greater clinical sensitivity, whereas the RdRp gene increased the clinical specificity. The RT-LAMP assays revealed a variable diagnostic performance. The information provided can be useful to choose the most appropriate diagnostic test and may contribute to the establishment of a consensus in the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 in Argentina and the region.
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The COVID-19 global pandemic is an unprecedented health crisis. Many researchers around the world have produced an extensive collection of literature since the outbreak. Analysing this information to extract knowledge and provide meaningful insights in a timely manner requires a considerable amount of computational power. Cloud platforms are designed to provide this computational power in an on-demand and elastic manner. Specifically, hybrid clouds, composed of private and public data centers, are particularly well suited to deploy computationally intensive workloads in a cost-efficient, yet scalable manner. In this paper, we developed a system utilising the Aneka Platform as a Service middleware with parallel processing and multi-cloud capability to accelerate the data process pipeline and article categorising process using machine learning on a hybrid cloud. The results are then persisted for further referencing, searching and visualising. The performance evaluation shows that the system can help with reducing processing time and achieving linear scalability. Beyond COVID-19, the application might be used directly in broader scholarly article indexing and analysing.