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Eggs are most fundamental and important foodstuff in everyday life for all developed and developing countries. It is not sufficient only to produce and transport eggs at a reasonable cost but arrangements must be made to ensure that the eggs reach the consumers well in time. In between the two extremes of minimization of eggs shipping cost and minimization of eggs shipping time, there exist a number of situations where an eggs transportation system decision maker would like a partial trade-off on shipping cost to attain a certain degree of shipping time advantages. From laying to the final destination, more eggs are broken during shipping than in any other step; therefore, losses due to eggshell breakage are greatest during shipping. In this paper, an algorithm and its underlying theory is developed to solve eggshell breakage restricted bi-criteria eggs transportation problem. This paper discusses a more realistic and general assumption that the eggs shipping time of bi-criteria eggs transportation problem depends on the quantity of the eggs transported and is an increasing piecewise constant function. The algorithm is also supported by a real life eggs shipping problem of Tamil Nadu, India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State negotiations constitute the foundation for the development of each nation, relying on the acquisition of resources and services. Public procurement not only has economic and social impacts but also demands that public officials ensure compliance with the law. However, some of these officials have violated the legal principles of public procurement, seeking to obtain benefits, goods, or personal services without legal backing. In studies conducted in Ecuador, this phenomenon has been analyzed in relation to the variability of indeterminacies that public officials face in interpreting regulations. Therefore, this paper focuses on analyzing and defining the levels of indeterminacy present in the neutrosophic variable that influences the functioning of state negotiations. The use of neutrosophic statistics is suggested for modeling the study to detect indeterminacies of the variable in each dimension. Among the neutrosophic results, the misuse of government policies in state negotiation processes is identified as the sole criterion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a neutrosophic study on attitudes towards virtual technology, with a special focus on the "Experience Machine". Employing a methodology that incorporates the theory of indecision and neutrality into response analysis, the perceptions of 50 university students were investigated. Opinions and feelings were transformed into neutrosophic numbers to calculate contradiction and conduct a detailed analysis. The results indicate a predisposition towards agreement with virtual technology, although notable indecision and a significant presence of neutral attitudes were detected. The correlations and clustering methods applied reveal a complex dynamic of attitudes, challenging binary interpretations and highlighting the need for more nuanced strategies. This neutrosophic approach offers new perspectives for the development and marketing of innovative technologies, recognizing the diversity of emotions and opinions in user responses to emerging technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy (DPN) as a chronic, irreversible complication and having a cardinal symptom that predominates such as pain contributes to causing changes and alterations in the emotional sphere and therefore in the mental health of the patient. The findings in relation to the perception of patients suffering from DPN reported that pain relief is associated with good levels of quality of life, which reduces stress, depression, insomnia and other factors that can threaten mental health. This paper has two fundamental purposes, the first one is to determine the correlation that exists between the prevalence of DPN and the patients who present psychological disorders. This problem is treated with the help of contingency tables and it is statistically processed with Pearson's chi-square coefficient. Secondly, the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) technique is applied to quantitatively evaluate, through the criteria of 3 experts, the possible strategies to be followed by patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multihead weighing processes are considered an important strategy in packaging companies. Multihead weighers are used for dosing a wide range of products, from granules to large products. The packaging process consists of choosing a subset of hoppers in the multihead weigher to form a product package. This paper proposes a set of filling strategies of hoppers to reduce the variability in the weight of the produced packages. The strategies are evaluated through a bi-objective optimization approach which aims to minimize the absolute difference between the target weight and the actual weight of the packages, while trying to maximize the selection of those hoppers with more time in the packaging system. In the bi-objective approach, the considered objectives are dynamically adjusted and managed in each packaging operation. In addition, the mathematical model and the packing algorithm are developed and presented. The results of the process performance parameters are obtained and analyzed to show the effectiveness of the proposed strategies. Also, conditions of minimum variability are identified and those can be used by the packaging industry where multihead weighers are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purple corn (Zea mays L.) is a species that is highly consumed in Peru, particularly in Lima, which is why it has great commercial and nutritional value. The purpose of this paper is to study the profitability of the production of purple corn (Zea mays L.) in the agricultural communities of Maynay and Pampachacra in the District of Huanta, Ayacucho, Peru. Profitability is the indicator that corn production produces a significant added value with respect to the investments and expenses needed for its production. There are indications that the profitability of this crop is not adequate because the growers do not apply the appropriate techniques that this crop needs. To verify that there is greater enough profitability in the production of purple corn from one community over the other, the t-Student test is used, which is a test to compare whether two samples come from the same population. We carried out the measurement by means of a survey about the criteria of local corn farmers. In the survey, we substituted numerical data by fuzzy numbers for dealing with the vagueness of interviewed's criteria. This leads to the methods of random fuzzy numbers for data processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the impact of tax benefits on alternatives for the use of Oil Palm trunks (Elaeis guineensis) as a raw material of the timber industry to avoid environmental liabilities in the department of Ucayali, Peru. The purpose is to investigate and develop technological alternatives to take advantage and industrially use the trunks that fulfilled their productive cycle, considering them as industrial raw material rather than agricultural waste. Therefore, the technology will be developed or adapted to generate products with added value. For this purpose, a survey was designed to 167 palm growers who answered 4 questions with 5 possible answer options. In addition to the descriptive analysis obtained, the Chi-squared Pearson's test was applied to determine the homogeneity between the different fiscal variables with respect to the trunk utilization variable. The result was to reject the null hypothesis (H0) with a significance value of 0.000; that is to say, every pair of variables has not the same population distribution, nevertheless most of the interviewed choose for there are tax benefits in alternatives of use of oil palm trunks as a raw material of the timber industry in this Peruvian department. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electroencephalography (EEG) signal contains important information about the electrical activity of the brain, which can reveal many pathologies. This information is transmitted in certain waveforms and events, one of which is the K-complex. Detection of these patterns is essential in sleep studies to diagnose neurophysiological and cognitive disorders. Existing detection methods rely heavily on tedious, time-consuming and error-prone manual inspection of the EEG waveform. Therefore, automatic identification of K-complexes is of great interest. In this paper, adapted wavelets are constructed to detect K-complexes using a variant of the Discrete ÓtextitShapelet Transform II (DST-II). This transform is designed to detect patterns (such as these K-complexes) by localizing them in time and frequency. This is achieved by numerically solving a system of nonlinear equations that estimates a wavelet filter adapted to the pattern. In this research, a numerical strategy for solving the nonlinear system of DST-II is presented. The influence of such a strategy on the detection of K-complexes in different signals and the detection accuracy versus other classical wavelet filters were evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to compare the effect of ration supplementation with breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) flour and plantain (Musa paradisiaca) flour at different concentrations on weight gain in Hybrid turkeys at the farm production of Canchán, Peru during 2021. An experimental study was carried out consisting of a total of 100 Hybrid turkeys; to which breadfruit flour and banana flour were supplied, in: 10% and 20% to the turkey ration. The experimental units were randomly distributed into 5 groups where it can be observed that the greatest weight gain was in group 1 with the addition of 10% breadfruit flour. Using the analysis of variance (ANOVA), statistically significant differences were found between these study groups (p = 0.005). It was possible to conclude that breadfruit meal has a greater effect than plantain meal on weight gain in Hybrid turkeys at the Canchán production center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to identify risk factors and to determine the level of contamination of Pseudomonas aeruginosa by conventional Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) in beef commercialized in the markets of Huánuco, Peru. To meet this objective, an epidemiological study was carried out. The sample consisted of 300 biological analyses of beef meats in the markets of Huánuco. A sample was taken from each position, making a total of 300 during a few days. Observation guides were used in order to collect data. The determination of the presence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa was made by PCR. A statistical analysis was carried out using contingency tables and Chi-square Pearson's test, between the possible causes of contamination and the results obtained from the sample analysis. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was isolated in 69 samples out of a total of 300, corresponding to a frequency of 23%. Among the identified factors are: dirty uniform of another color (p=2.5469x10-13); dirty hands (p=0.000); work utensils in poor condition and dirty (p=3.4776x10-12); these factors were statistically significant to the frequency of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in beef. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociolinguistic is the discipline related with the aspects of the society that influence in the use of the language, as the cultural norms and the context in the speakers' environment. It studies the language like a system of signs in the social context. This paper has as main objective the design of a model for the study of this discipline according to the age of individuals, based on the cognitive fuzzy maps. Fuzzy cognitive maps are tools that allow us to represent the knowledge by means of the relationship of concepts, where for each relationship it is associated a weight in the interval [-1, 1] or [0, 1] that means the degree of each relationship among concepts, and moreover if this it is direct or inverse. The proposed model is an approach to the topic that will allow us carrying out predictions on possible scenarios, besides to spread and to share the results obtained by each one of the investigators interested in the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at proposing a Constraint-based Learning Estimation of Distribution Algorithm (EDA) to solve the Multi-Mode Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (MMRCPSP). This problem is considered a combinatorial optimization problem and consists of a set of tasks to be carried out in an ordered way, limited availability of resources, and an execution mode for each task. Generally, traditional EDAs handle the constraints of the problem using strategies such as penalty, Pareto dominance, or others, without taking into account these constraints during the learning process. These traditional approaches usually cause the generation of infeasible solutions in each iteration. In this paper, an approach based on the constraints handling during the learning process of the probabilistic model is proposed. To validate the performance of the algorithms, the new approach in two scenarios is compared. First, in the solution of a set of classical optimization problems, where different EDAs are compared in terms of efficiency and efficacy. The second group of experiments is performed on a set of instances of the PSPLIB database. In this case, the proposed algorithm is compared with a traditional EDA and with other results reported in the bibliography. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposal outperforms both the results of traditional EDA and other EDA reported in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) is an organization based in Washington, United States belonging to the World Bank, whose objective is the support to resolve conflicts between States. Three South American countries, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, at certain times have decided to leave this organism. This paper aims to determine the best strategy to follow for these countries to make the most convenient decision about to leave or not this organization. The solution of this problem is done by applying neutrosophic games. Game Theory is used to solve conflict situations among different parties. In this paper, neutrosophic games are non-cooperative, in normal form, two players and zero sum games. In addition, evaluations are carried out with linguistic terms associated with neutrosophic sets, where indeterminacy is part of the calculations and this is the reason for including neutrosophic sets in modeling this problem. Obviously, in a dispute there is uncertainty and also lack of information, contradictions among the parties, inconsistencies, and other phenomena which justify the use of neutrosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents application results of soft computing techniques in project's evaluation. The authors analyze different project management's guides regarding decision making techniques inside its. In this paper the authors combine traditional techniques for project's evaluation with soft computing techniques. The authors propose an algorithm that combine the following techniques: traditional indicators from project management guides, fuzzy inference systems, machine learning algorithms and linguistic data summarization methods. In section number 3, the paper presents the comparisons of algorithms Anfis, Hyfis, FS.HGD, based on neural networks with algorithms GFS LS RS, GFS THRIFT based on evolutionary algorithms. In experiments, we applied cross validation techniques combined with Friendman test and Wilcoxon test Afterwards, the authors present an algorithm that build linguistic summaries to detect causes of project management failures. Finally, we present a comparison of the results and the conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the concept of "relationship quality" as a theoretical category of marketing. For this purpose, the search of the concept in the Scopus database is carried out, selecting 808 research papers, corresponding to three research areas: Business, Management and Accounting; Social Sciences and Econometric, Economic and Finance that incorporate this concept. Two important analysis were carried out using contemporary methods of bibliographic cartography through VOSviewer software: cocitation analysis of 122 journals and co-occurrence analysis of 12638 terms used in titles and abstracts of documents with textual mining methodology. The results show a growing interest in the concept, through 7 clear lines of research, and the need for future research that relates the concept to other complementary constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows up a work developed in the county of Benguela, Republic of Angola. As case matter, it was considering the Statistical Applied discipline that it is imparting in ISCED of Benguela. To determine the present state of their empiric teachinglearning process (interviews, pedagogic tests) and statistical methods they used. This paper pretend to show how to carry out the quantitative study, applying statistical tools one variable and multivariate as the Analysis of Main Components for Categorical Data, which allowed to verify the indicators (variables) that more weight had in the valuations emitted by the students in the instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to establish the incidence of the socio-economical levels of families in the development of bonding parental competence in the city of Guayaquil, where an analysis of the various documentary bases and scientific review that supports this theme is carried out. A mixed methodology was applied, through a qualitative and quantitative review of the bibliographic and statistical information related to the subject. The results obtained made it possible to verify that the socioeconomic conditions of many families that are in the lower and middle strata affect the bonding parental functions, whose parenting styles have a negative effect on the development of children and adolescents. Therefore, it is necessary to develop social intervention programs that allow integrating elements of educational and community models to strengthen this type of skills. For this study we selected a sampling of 147 cases and a contingency table was used as well as coefficient C of Person for calculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of the feedback relationship that exists between inflation, its uncertainty, and the economic growth of the two main Latin American economies. A Bivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity model is developed, which also allows the identification of asymmetric impacts on the conditional volatility of the product and inflation, the sample period corresponds to January 1985 to June 2019. Additionally, causality tests are developed to identify the fulfillment of the main hypotheses raised. Among the main findings is the verification of the Friedman-Ball hypothesis for both countries in most of the lags. Regarding the second hypothesis, it is found that the central bank of Mexico has presented a stabilizing behavior, while in the Brazilian case an opportunistic behavior has been identified. In the third hypothesis, no causal relationship of inflationary uncertainty towards economic growth is identified, in the case of Mexico; while, in the case of Brazil, an ambivalent causality has been identified, regarding the number of lags. Finally, in the fourth hypothesis we find results that corroborate, mainly for both economies, a positive effect from inflation on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institutional climate is an element that affects the achievement of institutional objectives, this makes of it a topic of interest for its proper management within universities. For this reason, the objective of this research is to determine the influence of the management of the institutional climate on the performance of the teaching staff of Universidad Regional Autónoma de los Andes. In this paper two questionnaires were designed about both the management and institutional climate based on a Likert scale. These questionnaires are applied to students of the Basic Nursing course of Universidad Regional Autónoma de los Andes, their validity were determined with the Alpha of Cronbach with values 0.874 and 0.839 for these instruments. As a result of the research, it is concluded that the management of the institutional climate and the performance of the teaching staff are mostly perceived as good, as well as their respective dimensions; and the correlation between them, which was calculated by the Spearman's Rho coefficente, was strong positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of the rehabilitation treatment to patients with patellar chondromalacia, is one of the polemical topics among the specialists of physical medicine and rehabilitation. This paper aims to elaborate an alternative of rehabilitative treatment for patients with patellar chondromalacia. Different methods and technics were used which allowed us the development of the whole investigative process. The elaboration of the scientific results is corroborated beginning from the diagnosis, where the necessity of an alternative treatment is revealed, because in the consulted literature it becomes evident the presence of lacks of the practical order which justify the present investigation. The results were compared applying the treatment to two groups of patients randomnly selected, one group received the traditional treatment and the other one received the alternative treatment. Some statistical tests were applied like t Student test. The achieved results reveal their validity in practice since the quasi-experiment and it was demonstrated that the relevant clinical effect is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is an essential pillar for the economic growth and the development of the countries. The sanitary and economic crisis has had devastating effects in the entire world in the well-being of the children. The commitment of all the actors is required to be able to fully guarantee the rights of the children, to mitigate the collateral effects in them, especially of the most vulnerable ones, besides to prioritize and to solve the problems of connectivity, the lack of technological tools, the school desertion, which are the inconveniences that persist in this new school period 2020-2021 and that have left a debit and a decreasing in the quality in the education, that has being accentuated in the poor sectors and in the rural areas. This paper aims to determine the factors that influence negatively in education that needs of the use of technologies in this pandemic context in the Ecuadorian educational system. For this, we summoned a group of nine experts and their opinions were processed by means of the Delphi method. The gathered knowledge was represented by means of conceptual maps for its popularization among the education workers around all the country. There were problems like lack of equity, intrafamiliar violence, among others that affect the efficacy in education for children and teenagers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategical learning "how to learn" responds to improve the teaching of the architectural design, recognizing to the mental functions that intervene in this process and that are those in charge of processing, organizing, coordinating, and integrating the information interacting with the environment that surrounds us, which is part in the student's integral education. The evaluation of a teaching-learning process is vital for the effectiveness of the process, because it allows us the correction of any current error and to reinforce the successes, which is inherent to all dynamic process. This paper aims to offer an evaluative model of the architectural teaching that is represented with the support of the Description Logics. They are formed by a family of logics that allow us the representation of the knowledge on a certain domain, in a structured way and formally well-defined. The advantages offered by the proposed model, besides representing the knowledge, is that it is possible the evaluation and self-evaluation, the socialization of the knowledge, as well as to carry out logical inferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper contains a comparative study between two non-deterministic approaches to the Delphi method: one based on Pythagorean fuzzy numbers, and the other based on the cloud model. From the empirical evidence obtained in an experimental investigation (N = 56 experts), related to the academic results forecast, it is observed that both approaches produce relatively similar results, even close to the results of an ARIMA test based on series chronological. The study reveals that both methods differ substantially in the way they input, process and output information. Advantages and disadvantages are analyzed, which must be addressed in each case. It is concluded that both approaches are viable, as alternative resources in unusual situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where the use of diachronic information is not always completely justified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study refers to the digital era and the skill-based learning in university students in Peru. Its goal is to analyze the use of digital tools in the 91 universities of the country by applying an online survey to 20,000 students randomly selected to know the implementation of virtual classrooms and skill-based learning in their universities. This is a very transcendental subject in the current times due to the Information Technology and Communication has become in tools of every day in practically every modern society en the world. Therefore, this fact cannot stay ignored in higher education, mainly in the pandemic context, where it is essential to utilize these tools, including e-learning. A special case is the skill-based learning; because of carrying it out in online manner constitutes a challenge. The authors of this paper do not conform themselves to perform a quantitative study on this subject in Peru, also they propose to carry out a qualitative analysis using the interviewees' opinions in a linguistic scale with terms "Good", "Regular", "Bad", and "I don't know". To perform calculus we applied the 2-tuples model, where linguistic data are aggregated without loss of information. This method allows us to obtain a global result in function of the linguistic scale, which will provide of an easily comprehensible final value to those involved in this study. To the best of the authors' knowledge this is the first time that a study of this kind is carried out in the Peruvian university education by using the 2-tuples method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper aims to analyze the impact of corruption and labour informality on Colombia's regional competitiveness in the period 2016 - 2019. For this purpose, some variables of the Departmental Competitiveness Index of the Private Competitiveness Council related to the phenomena of corruption and labor informality were chosen. Through the STATIS methodology, the performance of 25 departments and the city of Bogotá was reviewed around the variables selected. It is evident that there is a decrease in the value of the index for the four years of the study, due to the corruption scandals that the country experienced during those years and the limited effectiveness of the policies of inclusion to labor formality. It is concluded that the states of Antioquia, Casanare, Atlántico, Cundinamarca, Quindío, Risaralda and the capital city Bogotá, have performed well in aspects of labor market efficiency and government transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a teaching system for Higher Education Institutions in careers such as logistics, supply chain, internal logistics and related fields, through the understanding of mathematical procedures oriented to simulation. Presenting a case study of material requirements planning (MRP) that provides a production and supply schedule, according to the sales forecasts of a Distribution Centre (CEDIS): The production standards and delivery times of the suppliers, which respond to the What, how much and When to supply. (Velasco Flores, 2017): MRP is a set of techniques that uses bill of materials data, inventory data and the master production plan to calculate material requirements. It suggests releasing material replenishment orders and rescheduling open orders, based on the time lag. (APICS, 2019): The MRP I mathematical procedure presented in this research is based on two fundamental aspects: 1. It refers to finished products. 2. This system is carried out according to the needs of each item (independent demands and product structure): MRP I is based on the calculation of the net needs of the articles and components, introducing a factor not considered in the traditional methods of stock management, which ultimately leads to modulate the time, with due planning with respect to its use, to subsequently simulate it in a software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A deep disciplinary knowledge on the part of the higher education teachers is essential for having good quality in the teaching of classes in higher education. The teacher must master to the smallest detail on how to teach his/her subject. On the other hand, pedagogical knowledge allows teachers to educate students with disciplinary knowledge in the most effective and efficient way. This paper aims to analyze the relationship that exists between the increase of disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge as a result of the management accompaniment of remote work, that is, the supervision of managers of the teaching and learning work through information and communication technologies. Because it deals with concepts whose relationships are complex, this problem is modeled by dynamic fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM). This takes the results obtained from the experience of specialists in the subject from the application of the Delphi method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study the management of sustainable development in public and private educational institutions in the Pillco Marca Huánuco District of Perú. For this, a survey based on Bronfenbrenner's ecological model is designed. According to this theory each person is significantly affected by the interactions of a series of overlapping systems. This is part of contextual dialectical theories that explain the change of behavior of the individual through the influence of the environment. For the representation and processing of the data the Neutrosophic Likert scale is used. The classic Likert scale is widely used in psychological and sociological surveys, however, it restricts the possible answers to a fixed number and only one of them must be chosen. The neutrosophic Likert scale allows the respondent to determining the degree he/she prefers among these possible responses, in this way the respondent's opinions are captured more accurately, including the possible degree of indeterminacy between their opinions. Neutrosophic sets generalize fuzzy and intuitionistic fuzzy sets, so that to the degree of membership and non-membership of an element to the set, it is added a degree of indeterminacy, without any restriction among them. On the other hand, "Triple Refined Indeterminate Neutrosophic Sets" (TRINS) are used in the Neutrosophic Likert scale. The novelty of this article is that for the first time Sustainable Development Management is studied with the help of the Neutrosophic Likert scale, in a survey based on the Bronfenbrenner's ecological model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the Solvency Capital Requirement (SCR) for equity risk under the guidelines of the current insurance regulation in Mexico (equivalent to Solvency II): It is assumed that the Mexican Stock Index (IPC/BMV) is a representative sample of the behavior of the shares listed in the Mexican stock market. A GARCH methodology is proposed with innovations t-student for the calculation of the VaR (99.5 %) required as equivalence to the standard formula of the Circular Única de Seguros y Fianzas (CUSF): By this means, the aim is to demonstrate an underestimation of the equity risk when using the standard model of the Comisión Nacional de Seguros y Fianzas (CNSF): The contemplated time series runs from April 1990 to December 2018 on a daily basis. It was found that the RS(2)-GARCH (1, 1) model with t-student innovations, efficiently estimates the behavior of the CPI growth rate, and presents a greater statistical significance when compared with the asymmetric E-GARCH models, T-GARCH and the model with normal distribution. Consequently, the RS-GARCH model represents an additional methodology for the measurement of equity risk, and that can be translated into a tool for insurance companies to estimate their solvency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of the application of soft-computing techniques in the evaluation of software projects that can be used to secure income in software development environments. It is proposed a method for income assurance in project-oriented organizations that combines project management techniques with softcomputing techniques. Among the project management techniques used are: risk management techniques, techniques associated with time planning, cost planning, scope management and procurement management. Between the soft-computing techniques are: automatic learning techniques and word computing; In addition, the article analyzes the main project management standards and the shortcomings associated with the introduction of innovative decision-making techniques for the evaluation of projects; finally, the conclusions are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hypothesis test are widely used in data analysis but, in general, the random nature of p value is not consider in such applications. Power function and p-value probability distribution are strongly related, this relationship should be a component in both hypothesis testing conclusions and sample size calculation. However, this is not the case, possibly due of to two factors: first many people ignore the random nature of p-value and second there is a lack of information in the subject. Some papers introduced some characteristics of p-value distribution as mean value and median, but such values were not obtained for every parametric test in normal populations. This paper contains a full characterization of p-values probability distribution for both one and two sided hypothesis test for parameters in one or two normal populations. P-value probability distribution and their percentiles are presented, emphasizing in median value. Additionally the paper introduces approximate criteria for calculating both distribution function and percentiles, and highlight the relationship between power function and p-value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the risks during pregnancy, with high negative impact on both pregnant and fetus is cardiovascular disease suffering. Early diagnosis and appropriate treatment of this pathology significantly reduce the risk for pregnant. The treatment of pregnant women with heart diseases is characterized by the insufficient availability of experts with knowledge of medical specialties involved, and by the presence of situations of indeterminacy, uncertainty, vagueness, and incomplete data. Hence the need to create novel computational techniques for supporting clinical decision making during the treatment of these diseases. In this paper, we suggest a new model based on Neutrosophic Cognitive Map that integrates diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis processes for supporting clinical decision making during the treatment of pregnant women with cardiovascular diseases. The model introduces a new approach to represent the map's connections, by using Triangular Neutrosophic Numbers, making it possible to quantify the truth, indeterminacy, and falsity degrees of experts' preferences. The new model aims to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and treatment of heart diseases during pregnancy; and to mitigate the lack of expertise in this area. In validation process, a data base with 1019 cases provided by Cardiovascular and Pregnancy National Service/Gynecology and Obstetrics Hospital Ramón Gonzales Coros is used, and model's results are evaluated by experts to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed model for treating these diseases during pregnancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of project management as international discipline was encouraged by the increasing of projects complexity all over the world. Despite of the effort made by the principal standards of project management, the number of failed and renegotiated projects still very high. Decision making process is one of the root causes of projects failure. During project development, decisions are made according to the evaluations performed in projects cut. In each cut, experts make, sequentially, diagnosis, decision, and prediction processes. This paper aims at creating a new model that integrate the diagnosis, decision, and prediction processes in one platform for decision making during projects development. The new model is based on Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps (NCMs) with a triangular neutrosophic number in map's connections. The suggested model deals efficiently with the uncertainty and vagueness, since it considers the truth, indeterminacy, and falsity degrees. Finally, the proposed model has been compared, in terms of efficacy, with a traditional FCM-based model for decision making in projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal norms regulate the situation of migrants. However, at the international level they are primarily responsible for establishing fundamental human rights, but the normative development of both the United Nations and the ILO focuses primarily on analyzing the situation of migrant workers on a regular basis, leaving aside the situation of irregular migrant workers. This paper aims to determine the aspects that most influence to dignify the irregular migrants' lives in Ecuador. For this end, the Cognitive Neutrosophic Maps will be applied, which are fuzzy cognitive maps where indeterminacy is included. Cognitive maps are basically directed graphs where the vertices represent concepts and the edges represent connections between these concepts, in addition a weight that indicates if there exists a relationship among the concepts are included, and also if those relationships are direct or inverse. In the case of neutrosophic cognitive maps, the possibility of representing indeterminate relationships is also incorporated. This study is based on the interview and survey of 60 irregular migrants throughout the country, whose data were analyzed by three experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internal control is a kind of audit, which contributes to improve enterprise situation on their more fundamental aspects. This paper aims to determine if EPMAPA-T, the municipal public enterprise of potable water and sewer system, in Tulcán, Ecuador, has overcame the deficiencies indicated in an internal control carried out during a previous period. For this end, the so-called Neutrosophic AHP technique was used. This is a variation of the crisp AHP designed by Saaty, so that when the neutrosophic sets are incorporated, then, it is taking into account the uncertainty proper of decision making, as well as the computing with linguistic terms and the inclusion of an indeterminate element. This technique shall be applied to choose between two alternatives, either the enterprise improved its performance or not, specifically in the financial area. This is not a simple task; it needs for a mathematical tool of this kind for the many aspects that must be assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usually, organizations confront the difficultyto make thebest decision about the way to invest their recourses in different project alternatives. The organization acquires competitive advantages when their software development projects are well evaluatedand correctly selected. Selecting projects in the Information Technology field presents a challenge in many senses; some of them are, to assessintangible benefits is difficult, projectsare interdependent andorganizations imposeself-constraints. In addition, the framework to make the decision is generally uncertainwith many unknown factors. This paper aims to propose a model which integrates methods, techniques, and tools such as the Balanced Scorecard Model, Neutrosophic Analytic Hierarchy Process andZeroone linear programming. The proposed model is designed to select the best portfolio of Information Technology projects. It overcomes the challenges previously pointed out andcan be coherently incorporated in the strategic planprocessof the organization. In addition, it eases the course of experts' decision making, because it is based on Neutrosophy and hence incorporates the indeterminacy term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climatic change in the planet has directly impacted in agricultural results. Conversely, the changes that humanity has carried out to produce agricultural products has impacted in the climatic changes, e.g., the deforestation. That is why there exist complex causal relationships between the climate and the agriculture. A mathematical tool, which has proved its efficacy to study causal relationships among different variables, is the cognitive map, where such relationships are straightforwardly represented in form of directed graphs. This idea was generalized when fuzzy cognitive maps were introduced, it is there considered that those relationships can be partial. The neutrosophic cognitive maps generalize even more this technique, in such a way that possibility of indeterminacy among the variables, due to ignorance, contradiction, inconsistency or other causes, is considered. This paper aims to study causal relationships among the climatic vulnerability variables in the agricultural sector. For this end, we applied neutrosophic cognitive maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the workplace, the worker is considered the weakest part of the employment relationship. Untimely dismissal is a social problem in Ecuador. This paper aims to evaluate the situation of untimely dismissal in this country, through the opinion of experts on this topic. For this study, the method known as Fuzzy Cognitive Map has been used, which are directed graphs to represent relationships between concepts. Each vertex of the graph represents a concept and each edge the causal relationship between them. Each edge is associated with a value in [-1, 1] that represents the degree of causality between the concepts. When the value is negative it means that while one variable increases the other decreases and vice versa, when the value is positive then either, both variables increase or both decrease simultaneously. This first phase classifies each studied variable according to its influence on the others in terms of transmitter (it does not depend on another one and others depend on it), receiver (it depends on others and none depends on it), ordinary (it is both dependent on others as others depend on it). In the second phase, the Neutrosophic AHP technique is applied to assess the situation in Ecuador in this regard. Neutrosophic AHP consists of assigning a score to alternatives through expert evaluation of criteria and subcriteria, where a pair-wise comparison is made of the importance of one criterion over another. The use of neutrosophic sets has the advantage of including indeterminacy and calculation with linguistic terms. Neutrosophic AHP provides weights to each criterion to evaluate the total situation of untimely dismissal, which are used to obtain a final value once the evaluations are carried out by the experts. The results confirm that the situation is punctuated as 4.7 in a scale of 1-10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control in Ecuador needs of young members to carry out the defense of the citizens' interests. Unfortunately, at the present day the youth is increasingly skeptical of joining these types of activities. This paper aims to study the social network of young people who are part of the province of Santo Domingo de Tsáchilas, and to identify young people who are natural leaders within the province. For this end, the social networks techniques based on Small World are applied, which are modeled by non-directed graphs, where each vertex represents a person within the social network and each edge the relationship between them. This article also includes the degree of the connection and the presence of indeterminacy in the information. That is why the graphs that model the network are replaced by neutrosophic graphs, where there may be indeterminacy of the connection between at least two vertices. The adjacency matrix of these graphs contains neutrosophic numbers. 17 possible community leaders were identified as a first step in determining whether they could become leaders of the Citizen Participation Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social reinsertion of ex inmates is a complex process, of which the whole society is part. Many actors intervene in this process; among them we can enumerate the legal workers, the employers and the citizens. In this paper, an assessment is carried out about the social insertion of ex inmates in the Canton Santo Domingo, Ecuador. For this end, we decided to use 2-tuples neutrosophic numbers sets, which consist in an evaluation based on a linguistic scale as a kind of Computing with Words. This approach is the most adequate, because it permits to evaluate and to output results in form of linguistic terms, which is a natural and easy way to understand ideas by both decision makers and users. Neutrosophic sets allow us to include the indeterminacy that is consequence of the lack of information, or due to contradictory and inconsistent information, which usually can be found in the problems of every-day life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The databases of the Ministry of Public Health of Ecuador in the 2013-2017 period contain valuable information that can be used to determine the strengths, weaknesses, potential problems, among others, that affect the public health of the country. This knowledge can serve to draw better public health policies. This paper aims to propose a methodology that allows us to extract knowledge from these databases and at the same time to obtain association rules based on the combination of algorithms such as FP-growth and k-means. In summary, the methodology consists of the following steps: first, the dataset is stored in 5 files in the SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) format, and then the disease-related attributes are grouped and encoded, according to the code ICD-10, for this purpose it is proposed to apply the WEKA software. Finally, the FP-Growth algorithm is used to extract association rules from frequent items with the support of RAPIDMINER, which has the advantage of allowing us the use of WEKA algorithms. The methodology is illustrated with an example that shows how to use it and its usefulness to extract association rules in real-life situations from medical databases. With these representations of the information, morbidity and incidence behavior analysis of the registered groups and diseases can be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humanistic training in legal professionals is essential for the good performance of the future specialist in this profession. This training should begin from the student's phase. The present paper aims to study the situation of the competences on the humanistic subjects in the students of the legal career of the Autonomous Regional University of the Andes, extension Santo Domingo, additionally to select alternatives to increase the quality in this aspect. To do this, a survey applied to students was statistically evaluated and a group of experts assessed and ordered, according to their importance, possible alternatives to improve humanistic education. They decided to use the technique called Neutrosophic TOPSIS. This method is used in the framework of neutrosophy, which incorporates the uncertainty and imprecision to the Multicriteria Decision, in the form of three membership functions, one of truthfulness, another of indeterminacy and the third one of falsity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The State's extra-contractual responsibility is the guarantee of the rights, either for lack or deficient provision of public services or for actions or omissions in the exercise of public powers, the public servant responds for breaking the laws, as well as for excess or defect in the performance of its activity. In this paper, the factors that influence the extra-contractual responsibility of the Ecuadorian State are studied aided by a mathematical method. The chosen method is neutrosophic DEMATEL, which consists in the study of the cause effect in complex situations, as it is the case. The incorporation of Neutrosophy, which is the branch of philosophy that studies all related to neutralities, allows us taking into account the indeterminacy, which is typical when there exists lack of information or contradictory, inconsistent or paradoxical information. This method permits us the evaluation by using linguistic terms, which is a natural way for human beings' assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the problem of assigning teachers to the learning units. The approach takes into account the professional profile of teachers, the experience and interest to assign a learning unit. From a mathematical point of view, the objective is to find a complete assignment of teachers to learning units, which maximizes a function of weighted aggregation. For the optimization process, the variant of the Ant colony system (ACS) of the Metaheuristic optimization based on Ant colony (ACO) is used. As a case study, we used a real scenario of the Technical University of the State of Quevedo with 18 teachers and 54 subjects of Systems Engineering. The results showed that the proposal has a high degree of convergence and low standard deviation values; This is summarized in high quality solutions in most executions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of project management as international discipline was encouraged by the increasing of projects complexity all over the world. Despite of the effort made by the principal standards of project management, the number of failed and renegotiated projects still very high. Decision making process is one of the root causes of projects failure. During project development, decisions are made according to the evaluations performed in projects cut. In each cut, experts make, sequentially, diagnosis, decision, and prediction processes. This paper aims at creating a new model that integrate the diagnosis, decision, and prediction processes in one platform for decision making during projects development. The new model is based on Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps (NCMs) with a triangular neutrosophic number in map's connections. The suggested model deals efficiently with the uncertainty and vagueness, since it considers the truth, indeterminacy, and falsity degrees. Finally, the proposed model has been compared, in terms of efficacy, with a traditional FCM-based model for decision making in projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) is one of the main topics in the in bioinformatics domain, consists finding an optimal alignment for three or more biological sequences with the number maximum of conserved zones or totally aligned columns. Different scores to assess the quality of the alignments have been proposed, so the problem can be formulated and resolved as a Multi-Objective Optimization Problem (MOP). For this reason, in this paper we present a Multi- Objective approach applied to MSA. We have considered state-of-the-art optimization algorithms aimed at solving different formulations of the MSA: NSGAII, NSGA-III, SPEA2, MOCell, SMS-EMOA, MOEA/D and GWASF-GA. Furthermore we have considered some popular metrics as objectives to be optimized: The weighted Sum-Of-Pairs with a ne gap penalties (wSOP), the Totally Aligned Columns (TC), STRIKE and BaliScore. Finally we have described the main features of our software jMetalMSA, a Multi-Objective optimization software tool applied to MSA problem and illustrated a working example for experimentations purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the deployment of new devices, protocols and applications, network traffic is changing to adapt to these trends. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the impact over services and resources in data networks. Traffic classification of network is an important requirement to optimize traffic engineering and adequately provision quality of service. In this paper, we analize the variable packet size of the traffic in an university campus heterogenuos network (wired and wireless) throught the collected data using a novel sniffer that ensures the user data privacy. We separate the collected data in each scenario, by type of traffic, protocols and applications in order to compare the behavior of packet length. Finally, we estimate the traffic model that represents this traffic by means of probability distribution and compute its associated numerical parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about a methodology to calculate all the components of the influence matrices of the curved boundary elements of three nodes in plane elasticity problems, using a semianalytical formulae and coordinate transformations, with which it is possible to savings of CPU time of the numerical integration used in these cases (Gauss-Legendre), maintaining its accuracy. To make the comparison of CPU times and precision of the results obtained by both techniques, numerical and semi-analytical subroutines were created using MAPLE symbolic-manipulation software. Among the results achieved is the reduction of computation times by 76%, 61% and 35% compared to the Gaussian numerical integration with four, six and eight integration points, respectively. That this technique successfully was used by the authors in the integration of matrices in the Finite Element Method (FEM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today quality is not only a requirement for big companies, it is rather a primary requirement in organizations, since customers are increasingly demanding and therefore require that the service or the products they acquire or pay are of high quality. Since the concept of quality of service constitutes the adjustment of the service delivered to consumers with their expectations. This definition determines the decision to spend or invest if it is the case. Service companies, on the other hand, must be sure of the capacity they have to offer the required attention, thus it is of fundamental importance to establish and measure the requirements of the products and services offered to customers. The aim of this paper is to present a statistical evaluation of the quality in CREA, a real estate company located in the city of Puyo, province of Pastaza, based on a survey of twenty costumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]