ABSTRACT
The present study draws from the need to face twenty-first-century Engineering students' lack of oral communication skills in digital environments. The existing deficiencies became evident during the months of COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, when most communication processes, both in academic and professional settings, involved the use of digital means. On this basis, the study aims at identifying ESP university students' self-reported strengths and weaknesses to build persuasive digital oral speeches using a self-assessment rubric that was specifically designed to evaluate their communication skills in digital environments. The rubric comprised 22 items distributed between five significant areas of knowledge: building communication skills (content/cognition and linguistic area), performing communication skills (physical and socio-emotional areas) and creating digital content skills (technical area). The results reveal that about 40% of the students considered their level of digital communication skills deficient, being the linguistic, socio-emotional and physical areas of communication the most affected ones. The ultimate intention of the study is to help students become aware of their command of oral skills in digital environments –their specific strengths and weaknesses– to help them thrive in both traditional and digital communication. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has led to taking extreme actions aimed at reducing the spread of the virus by drastically changing the lifestyles of students, and causing negative effects in situations that influence the quality of sleep and eating behavior. The aim was to associate sleep quality and eating behavior in Mexican university students during confinement by SARS-Cov-2 (COVID-19). Methodology: Cross-sectional study carried out using a web form, in a sample of 821 students, the quality of sleep was evaluated with the self-application of the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index validated in Spanish and eating behavior with the validated Eating Behavior Questionnaire. Statistical analyzes for the association between sleep quality and eating behavior were determined with chi square, with statistical significance of 5%. OR were calculated by binary logistic regression using SPSS 25.0 software. Results: Alterations in sleep quality were found with association to unhealthy eating behaviors, mainly in the following behaviors;students who eat less than 3 meals a day during the week (OR=0.74;95%CI: 0.60,0.92), those who showed liking for alcoholic beverages (OR=1.1;95%CI: 1.04,1.18), those who showed liking for the habitual consumption of packaged foods (OR=1.12;95%CI: 1.01,1.24), students do not include vegetables or salads in their main meal time during the day with a risk of 1.07 times more of having poor quality of sleep (OR=1.07;95%CI: 1.01,1.13) young people do not consume fruits in their main meal of the day (OR=1.05;95%CI: 1.02,1.12), compared to good sleepers. Conclusions: Weight loss was mainly mediated by energy restriction, REI was not superior to REC as a therapeutic intervention, since weight loss seems to be mediated by the level of energy restriction and not because it is performed continuously or discontinuous.
ABSTRACT
Introduction- This research is motivated, by the current world situation, caused by the pandemic declared by the WHO before the spread and severity of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), notified for the first time in Wuhan (China) on December 31 of 2019. Through mathematical and statistical analysis, it seeks to show and explain in an expeditious manner, the causes for which there is a higher rate of contagion and lethality due to the virus, in different countries, taking into consideration patterns associated with social political behavior and economic, as a first approach to knowing statistics that allow generating forecasts for future periods, given the conditions. Objective- The main objective of this work is to define the correlation of the economic, social and demographic variables of the countries of America, with respect to the contagion of the virus, proposing a forecast model on the level of contagion in each cluster proposed by the different regions of the American continent. Methodology- The study performs clustering (grouping) of the countries of America with respect to their geographical position North America, Central America and the Caribbean islands and South America, followed by a search for statistical data on social, economic and demographic indicators of the countries of America in recent years and statistics of levels of contagion of COVID 19 in sources such as international organizations regulating health issues. Next, a characterization and correlation of the collected data was carried out, to finally, based on the results of the correlation, make a forecast of the level of contagion that would be reached by each of the regions. Results- The purpose of this document is to provide information on the countries of North America, Latin America and the Caribbean with respect to the analysis of mortality from COVID-19, through methods of analysis of mortality from all causes as one of the approaches proposed to contribute to the assessment of the true magnitude of the burden of the COVID-19 epidemic in these countries. Conclusions- The results show interesting information, since the Latin American curve turned out to be much less pronounced than that of the United States, in terms of contagion and deaths, despite the socio-demographic conditions, economic, technological and political opportunities. This analysis invites us to find out which are those correlations that directly impact the behavior of infections, taking into account variables such as age, gender, stratum, level of education, and other sociodemographic characteristics that may influence the spread or containment of the virus.