A Tele-Health Communication and Information System for Underserved Children in Rural Areas of Nicaragua

Millennium Development Goals point out the necessity of actively promoting maternal-child health care status, especially in underserved areas. This article details the development actions carried out between 2008 and 2011 in some rural communities of Nicaragua with the aim to provide a low-cost tele-health communication service. The service is managed by the health care center of Cusmapa, which leads the program and maintains a communication link between its health staff and the health brigades of 26 distant communities. Local agents can use the system to report urgent maternal-child health care episodes to be assessed through WiMAX-WiFi voice and data communications attended by two physicians and six nurses located at the health care center. The health and nutritional status of the maternal-child population can be monitored to prevent diseases, subnutrition, and deaths. The action approach assumes the fundamentals of appropriate technology and looks for community- based, sustainable, replicable, and scalable solutions to ensure future deployments according to the strategies of the United Nations.

Transmission of digital chaotic and information-bearing signals in optical communication systems

A new proposal to have secure communications in a system is reported. The basis is the use of a synchronized digital chaotic systems, sending the information signal added to an initial chaos. The received signal is analyzed by another chaos generator located at the receiver and, by a logic boolean function of the chaotic and the received signals, the original information is recovered. One of the most important facts of this system is that the bandwidth needed by the system remain the same with and without chaos.

Evaluating alternative industrial network organizations and information systems

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a simulation‐based evaluation method for the comparison of different organizational forms and software support levels in the field of supply chain management (SCM). Design/methodology/approach – Apart from widely known logistic performance indicators, the discrete event simulation model considers explicitly coordination cost as stemming from iterative administration procedures. Findings - The method is applied to an exemplary supply chain configuration considering various parameter settings. Curiously, additional coordination cost does not always result in improved logistic performance. Influence factor variations lead to different organizational recommendations. The results confirm the high importance of (up to now) disregarded dimensions when evaluating SCM concepts and IT tools. Research limitations/implications – The model is based on simplified product and network structures. Future research shall include more complex, real world configurations. Practical implications – The developed method is designed for the identification of improvement potential when SCM software is employed. Coordination schemes based only on ERP systems are valid alternatives in industrial practice because significant investment IT can be avoided. Therefore, the evaluation of these coordination procedures, in particular the cost due to iterations, is of high managerial interest and the method provides a comprehensive tool for strategic IT decision making. Originality/value – Reviewed literature is mostly focused on the benefits of SCM software implementations. However, ERP system based supply chain coordination is still widespread industrial practice but associated coordination cost has not been addressed by researchers.

A semantic middleware architecture focused on data and heterogeneity management within the Smart Grid

There is an increasing tendency of turning the current power grid, essentially unaware of variations in electricity demand and scattered energy sources, into something capable of bringing a degree of intelligence by using tools strongly related to information and communication technologies, thus turning into the so-called Smart Grid. In fact, it could be considered that the Smart Grid is an extensive smart system that spreads throughout any area where power is required, providing a significant optimization in energy generation, storage and consumption. However, the information that must be treated to accomplish these tasks is challenging both in terms of complexity (semantic features, distributed systems, suitable hardware) and quantity (consumption data, generation data, forecasting functionalities, service reporting), since the different energy beneficiaries are prone to be heterogeneous, as the nature of their own activities is. This paper presents a proposal on how to deal with these issues by using a semantic middleware architecture that integrates different components focused on specific tasks, and how it is used to handle information at every level and satisfy end user requests.

Optimizing the creation of base populations for aquaculture breeding programs using phenotypic and genomic data and its consequences on genetic progress

The success of an aquaculture breeding program critically depends on the way in which the base population of breeders is constructed since all the genetic variability for the traits included originally in the breeding goal as well as those to be included in the future is contained in the initial founders. Traditionally, base populations were created from a number of wild strains by sampling equal numbers from each strain. However, for some aquaculture species improved strains are already available and, therefore, mean phenotypic values for economically important traits can be used as a criterion to optimize the sampling when creating base populations. Also, the increasing availability of genome-wide genotype information in aquaculture species could help to refine the estimation of relationships within and between candidate strains and, thus, to optimize the percentage of individuals to be sampled from each strain. This study explores the advantages of using phenotypic and genome-wide information when constructing base populations for aquaculture breeding programs in terms of initial and subsequent trait performance and genetic diversity level. Results show that a compromise solution between diversity and performance can be found when creating base populations. Up to 6% higher levels of phenotypic performance can be achieved at the same level of global diversity in the base population by optimizing the selection of breeders instead of sampling equal numbers from each strain. The higher performance observed in the base population persisted during 10 generations of phenotypic selection applied in the subsequent breeding program.