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Entrepreneurship: The Case of Ecuador

2021 , Morales Molina, Tania , Llamuca Pérez S. , Morales-Urrutia X. , Victor V.E.

In recent decades, entrepreneurship has experienced a significant increase worldwide, being considered as an important tool to improve the economic growth of a country. This article aims to present an overview of the current situation of entrepreneurship at both national and local levels. The methodology used was descriptive, also a literature review was conducted, the data analyzed came from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses of the directory of companies for the period 2013–2016, the number of enterprises at the level of Ecuador and specific by province was analyzed. After the analysis, it was concluded that there is a significant increase in micro-enterprises throughout the country, especially in the provinces of Pichincha and Guayas. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Salty Taste Intensity Classifier Through Multivariate Analysis

2022 , Fuentes E.M. , Varela Aldas, José , Verdú S. , Grau Meló R. , Barat J.M. , Alcañiz M.

Voltammetric electronic Tongues (VET) are widely used on the industry, especially when focused on sample classification, adulteration recognizement and quality control, a VET equipment developed by the Interuniversity Institute of Molecular Recognition and Technological Development of the UPV-UV (IDM) was employed to develop the study, the results of each test were 7920 data, and different Chloride of Sodium concentrations such as 1.25 mM, 2.5 mM, 5 mM and 10 mM were tested. This is a part of a series of studies related with basic flavor recognize though VET, so the aim of this work was to study the capability of the VET to recognize different intensity of salt concentrations, supported on multivariate analysis. The results showed a concordance of more than 70.31% in the separation of samples, allowing to conclude as acceptable the performance of the classifier and the data acquired through the voltammetric electronic tongues. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Neuropsychological treatment of ADHD in preschool: Training of executive function [Tratamiento Neuropsicológico del TDAH en Preescolares: Entrenamiento de la Función Ejecutiva]

2016 , Ramos Galarza, Carlos , Bolaños M. , Paredes L. , Ramos D.

Preschoolers who have symptoms of impulsivity, hyperactivity and attention deficit manifest alterations in the executive functions: inhibitory control, working memory, monitoring and self-directed speech. It is essential in the preschool classroom to identify children who have difficulty regulating their behavior. The importance of this early detection is the possibility of avoiding a picture of ADHD with greater complexity in the child's future. Training of executive function in children who could present these symptoms has been described as a highly effective strategy. Researches affirm that training of executive function would decrease the likelihood that a child will have ADHD at school age if he had received early attention from preschool. From the clinical experience it has witnessed the evolution of cases of children identified preschool with symptoms of ADHD, and then do a training executive functions for periods of one to two years better, and even at the beginning of schooling have a less severe psychopathology, unlike children who have not received this early intervention. In this paper I will describe the clinical picture of ADHD in initial preschool, the relationship between this disorder and executive function and some strategies in the training of executive functions.

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Friend or foe? Social system influences the allocation of signals across functional categories in the repertoires of the New World jays

2016 , Rosa G.L.M. , Ellis J.M. , Bonaccorso, Elisa , Dos Anjos L.

Many factors could influence repertoire size and function. Here, we provide a review of the descriptions of vocal repertoires of New World jays and a unifying terminology for function of their vocalizations. We summarized 19 different functional types of vocal behaviour shared by at least two species, for review purposes. Comparing the 14 studied species, we also classified vocalizations into four major classes defined a priori: 'Social Integration', 'Conflict Resolution', 'Predator-related', and 'Breeding'. Cooperative breeding, as well as group size, are related not only to repertoire size, but to how species allocate their vocalizations into functional classes. We discuss the tendencies of Conflict Resolution and Social Integration and the possibility of the existence and implications of a trade-off between those functional classes. We identified gaps in the current knowledge on vocalizations of the studied species, and emphasize the importance of empiric evidence of vocalization function in the New World jays. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016.

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Supervised learning for improving the accuracy of robot-mounted 3D camera applied to human gait analysis

2024 , Guffanti, Diego , Brunete A. , Hernando M. , Álvarez D. , Rueda J. , Navarro E.

Background and Objective: the use of 3D cameras for gait analysis has been highly questioned due to the low accuracy they have demonstrated in the past. The objective of the study presented in this paper is to improve the accuracy of the estimations made by robot-mounted 3D cameras in human gait analysis by applying a supervised learning stage. Methods: the 3D camera was mounted in a mobile robot to obtain a longer walking distance. This study shows an improvement in detection of kinematic gait signals and gait descriptors by post-processing the raw estimations of the camera using artificial neural networks trained with the data obtained from a certified Vicon system. To achieve this, 37 healthy participants were recruited and data of 207 gait sequences were collected using an Orbbec Astra 3D camera. There are two basic possible approaches for training and both have been studied in order to see which one achieves a better result. The artificial neural network can be trained either to obtain more accurate kinematic gait signals or to improve the gait descriptors obtained after initial processing. The former seeks to improve the waveforms of kinematic gait signals by reducing the error and increasing the correlation with respect to the Vicon system. The second is a more direct approach, focusing on training the artificial neural networks using gait descriptors directly. Results: the accuracy of the 3D camera to objectify human gait was measured before and after training. In both training approaches, a considerable improvement was observed. Kinematic gait signals showed lower errors and higher correlations with respect to the ground truth. The accuracy of the system to detect gait descriptors also showed a substantial improvement, mostly for kinematic descriptors rather than spatio-temporal. When comparing both training approaches, it was not possible to define which was the absolute best. Conclusions: supervised learning improves the accuracy of 3D cameras but the selection of the training approach will depend on the purpose of the study to be conducted. This study reveals the great potential of 3D cameras and encourages the research community to continue exploring their use in gait analysis. © 2024 The Authors

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Spatial distribution patterns of fish assemblages relative to macroinvertebrates and environmental conditions in Andean piedmont streams of the Colombian Amazon

2016 , Tobes I. , Gaspar S. , Peláez-Rodríguez M. , Miranda R.

This work provides insight into an Andean–Amazonian river system by conducting a comprehensive study of the biodiversity and ecological processes in a poorly studied neotropical freshwater ecosystem. Hacha River in western Colombia harbours a rich and largely unknown biodiversity and is experiencing an increase in anthropogenic impacts from the city of Florencia. Changes in natural habitat characteristics and environmental quality were analysed and related to the distribution of fish and macroinvertebrates. Four environmental quality indices were applied, and concentrations of potential water pollutants were measured. All environmental quality indices used were reliable because they produced similar assessments of the ecological integrity of the study sites and were inversely related to the potential water pollutant concentrations. Fish and macroinvertebrate communities notably changed in response to differences in environmental quality, reinforcing the ecological integrity assessments. Nevertheless, natural gradients that influence fish and macroinvertebrate distributions showed an overlap with changes in environmental quality, thereby confounding the ability to discern the influence of natural and anthropogenic-induced alterations and to confirm an initials hift in fish assemblages due to anthropogenic impacts. © International Society of Limnology 2016.

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Immersive virtual reality app to promote healthy eating in children

2020 , Fuentes E.M. , Varela Aldas, José , Palacios-Navarro G. , García-Magariño I.

An immersive virtual reality application was developed as a serious game to support children on their decisions about food, the system was composed by the Gear VR (Viewer and controller), and a phone which contains the mobile application developed in Unity, providing the immersive environment, the platform was based on a path where the player has to go through it choosing between different sort of meals and also between different physical activities, the effect of balanced diet plus adequate physical activity seems reflected on the avatar previously chosen by the user, the app was tested on 12 children between 8 and 10 years old during one week, children participated on the study after receiving an informed consent, analyzing the tendencies of food choice on children before and after, a notorious positive effect could be seen on the users according to the avatar analyzed at the end of the round, besides a System usability ore was also applied to evaluate the degree of usability of the app, reaching a ore of 88.33% which rates the app as very usable, this results were even better than what was planned at the beginning of the experience. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.

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Serious videogames for teaching recycling based on the STEM Project

2022 , Chacon-Castro M. , Lopez-Quintero J. , Acosta-Vargas P. , Luna-Pineda J. , Jadán Guerrero, Janio

This article shows an educational practice laboratory, where high school students created educational video games for teaching recycling. This allows the formation of the STEM research with guidance of the researcher. This project had a great impact for the educational institution and for the students presenting this project at the I International Congress of Steam and Active Methodologies (2021). The objective of this research is to design and evaluate serious video games for teaching recycling based on the STEM methodology (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The strategy in this research is: planning, observation, action and reflection. The video game programming is done in the Scratch application where students program the code through blocks. This educational project was applied to 40 sophomore high school students from a private institution. Among the results it is found that there is evidence of a motivational increase on part of the students in mathematics class, due to the fact that when programming in blocks they are more active, dynamic and playful during the learning process. © 2022 IEEE.

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A long-range, low-cost technique to measure water level variations over limnimeters on hydraulic weir using machine vision and IoT

2022 , Chiliquinga-Chiliquinga A. , Garcés-Llerena R. , Bautista-Naranjo V. , Vayas Ortega, Germania , Castillo-Velazquez J.-I. , Clotet R. , Huerta M. , Rivas-Lalaleo D.

It is neither practical nor economical to make continuous and direct measurements of the water flow in a stream, so indirect methods must be used to measure the water level and, based on a calibration curve, relate it to the corresponding flow rate. A hydraulic weir with a limnimeter fulfills this purpose, but its disadvantage is that it does not allow the automated registration of the water level and therefore new and more efficient technologies must be used to perform this measurement automatically and thus have a lower waste and optimization of the resource. This experiment develops an algorithm based on computer vision and the inclusion of the concepts of the Internet of Things, in order to measure and record the values of the water level in a hydraulic dam, also includes energy storage system, power supply, remote computer, devices with wireless communication and IoT platform that allow a measurement error of less than ± 2% to be obtained with respect to a visual measurement made by the operator. © 2022 IEEE.

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Does the political regime favor economic growth?: Experience from a primary-exporting price-taking economy

2018 , Guadalupe-Lanas, Jorge , Cruz-Cárdenas J. , Arévalo-Chávez P. , Palacio-Fierro A.

Purpose: This study aims to analyze the influence of political regime on economic growth. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology was based on an inter-period comparison of the evolution of macroeconomic fundamentals in three different political regimes in Ecuador, a South American country. Findings: The results showed that what determines the evolution of macroeconomic fundamentals is not the political regime that oversees it, but the size of a positive exogenous shock on the price of raw materials, which, by providing higher incomes, considerably increases the level of investment and net exports. However, the political regime does affect the distribution of income in sectors such as health and education. Originality/value: As far as the authors know, this may be the first paper to explore the importance of a positive exogenous shock on a political regime for the case of primary-exporting Latin American economies, which are price takers subject to exogenous shocks. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.