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Characteristics of the study of pharmacological interventions for the management of type A hemophilia A in pediatrics: bibliometric analysis

Luis Humberto Manrique Rubio — 2025-07-04

Introduction: Hemophilia A in pediatrics is a topic of interest due to the catastrophic, out-of-pocket, and health costs it generates, in addition to the disease burden it causes. Recently, the need to identify novel therapies has been emphasized.

Objective: To evaluate the characteristics of research on pharmacological interventions for the management of hemophilia A in pediatrics.

Method: Bibliometric study. A semi-structured search was conducted in the Scopus database.

Results: A total of 363 articles were included. The first publication was in 1964. Predominantly, the scientific output consisted of original articles (87.32%; n=317), followed by reviews (6.1%; n=22). International collaboration was 7.98%. The University Medical Center Utrecht (Netherlands) was the most prolific and impactful institution, while the United States was the most prolific and impactful country. The most frequently used keywords were blood coagulation factor 8, intravenous drug administration, and hemarthrosis. The co-occurrence network revealed three research niches related to therapy, age groups, and specific outcomes.

Conclusions: A modest growth in research on pharmacological interventions for the management of hemophilia A in pediatrics was identified. The research has been based on primary data, led by Dutch institutions and in Japan, despite the United States being the most prolific country. The most frequently studied topics are related to pathophysiology, coagulation factor VIII, complications, and hemarthrosis.

LLmP Use of LLM assistants as support in the Project’s Formulation process: A Systematic Mapping

Nelson Fernando Fern´ández-Majé — 2025-10-06

Introduction: Project formulation requires defining objectives, alternatives, resources, and evaluation criteria in increasingly complex contexts. In Colombia, despite the support of the Adjusted General Methodology (MGA), technical and operational barriers persist. Generative Artificial Intelligence, particularly large language models (LLMs), has emerged to support writing, synthesis, and planning, but its use in project formulation still lacks consolidated evidence.

Objective: To identify and classify how LLMs have been applied to project formulation, their benefits and limitations, the evaluation methods used, application domains, and the existence of LLM or GenAI tools that support the MGA.

Method: Systematic mapping following Petersen. Research questions were defined with PICOC, together with search strings and inclusion and exclusion criteria. IEEE Xplore, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and Taylor & Francis were queried from 2020 to 2025. A PRISMA diagram summarized identification, screening, and selection. Of 372 records, 33 studies met the criteria.

Results: GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 predominate. The most evidenced tasks include effort and time estimation, plan and schedule generation, ideation and design, and early risk management. Support was also observed for requirements, work breakdown, and resource allocation. Evaluation combined human comparisons, expert review, automatic metrics with other LLMs, surveys or interviews, and objective measures. No reports were found of LLM or GenAI tools to support the MGA.

Conclusions: LLMs speed up cognitive tasks and improve clarity and creativity, but they require human validation, better contextualization, explainability, data protection, and technical integration. Trends point to hybrid approaches with retrieval augmented generation (RAG), multitask agents, and multimodal capabilities. The absence of reported experiences for the MGA reveals a strategic opportunity for research and development.

El Potencial socio-ecológico e infraestructural para el ecoturismo comunitario: estudio de caso en el norte de Colombia

Diego Andrés Cuao Martínez — 2025-08-29

Abstract

Introduction: Ecotourism in wetlands aims to promote environmental conservation while generating social and economic benefits through community participation. This approach enhances local empowerment and fosters a sense of ownership over the ecotourism project.

Objective: To assess the socio-ecological and infrastructural characteristics for the development of a community-based ecotourism program in the village of Caimital, Malambo.

Method: A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining qualitative and quantitative techniques. The qualitative phase included four field visits during which a checklist was applied to assess ecotourism-related infrastructure in the Ciénaga de Malambo (CM), focusing on road conditions, availability of terrestrial and fluvial transportation, and the presence and quality of local services such as gastronomy and handicrafts. In the quantitative phase, 45 structured surveys were administered to heads of households living closest to the CM. The survey was divided into three sections: socioeconomic characteristics of the community, environmental conditions of the wetland, and community perceptions of a potential ecotourism program. Additionally, documentary analysis was conducted to contextualize the socio-environmental background of the study area.

Results: The findings indicate a high level of community acceptance (90%) for implementing a community-based ecotourism program involving the CM, with a clear preference for economic benefits. However, significant limitations were identified in road infrastructure and fluvial transportation, as well as environmental issues such as pollution and the depletion of fishing resources in the CM.

Conclusions: In conclusion, ecotourism is presented as a viable alternative for sustainable development in the CM, provided that adequate coordination between the different actors involved in the territory is guaranteed.

Design and Preliminary Evaluation of a Kinematically-Adaptive Immersive Virtual Reality Exergame for Post-Stroke Rehabilitation

Julian Felipe Villada Castillo — 2025-10-24

Introduction: Upper limb rehabilitation after a stroke faces challenges such as low motivation and adherence to traditional therapies. This study presents an Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) exergame incorporating a kinematically adaptive difficulty system that dynamically modifies exercise complexity in real time based on movement data collected by VR equipment.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of an adaptive system based on dimensionless jerk to optimize therapeutic effort in post-stroke participants.

Methodology: A usability study was conducted with 20 participants divided into a control group (non-adaptive version) and an experimental group (adaptive version). The Borg Fatigue Scale and the Virtual Reality Neuroscience Questionnaire (VRNQ) were used to measure engagement, perceived fatigue, and user experience.

Results: The adaptive system improved participants’ engagement and therapeutic outcomes and therapeutic outcomes. The experimental group reported perceived physical effort levels closer to the ideal therapeutic range defined in the literature. Additionally, this group achieved higher evaluations in user experience and immersion.

Conclusions: The exergame proved to be an effective and personalized tool for post-stroke rehabilitation. While areas for improvement were identified, such as responsiveness in advanced stages, this system offers a dynamic and motivating approach to optimizing recovery processes.

Development of an intelligent system to predict university dropout rates in Colombia using machine learning techniques

Ana Gabriela Banquez Maturana — 2025-10-20

Introduction: Student dropout is a critical global challenge with profound socioeconomic and institutional impacts. On average, one in five students drop out of school, limiting social mobility, deepening inequalities, and reducing the sustainability of education systems.

Objective: Student dropout is a critical global challenge with profound socioeconomic and institutional impacts. On average, one in five students drop out of school, limiting social mobility, deepening inequalities, and reducing the sustainability of education systems.

Method: The study, framed within Design Science Research (DSR), used a longitudinal dataset of 104,147 records from a Colombian university. Rigorous preprocessing was applied, including reclassification of the target variable and engineering of 27 predictor features. Seven algorithms were evaluated, selecting LightGBM, which was optimized in its hyperparameters and balanced with SMOTE (Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique).

Results: LightGBM proved to be the superior algorithm with a weighted F1-Score of 0.8125. The optimized model achieved an overall accuracy of 87% and an F1-Score of 0.83 for the “Dropout” class. Strategic calibration of the decision threshold to 0.45 raised the recall to 87%, correctly identifying 1,447 of 1,654 actual dropouts. SHAP analysis confirmed that REAL_PROGRESS_PERCENTAGE was the most influential predictor with an impact of 1.45.

Conclusions: Cumulative academic performance, grade trends, and actual progress percentage are the most decisive predictors of dropout, in interaction with socioeconomic variables such as income stratum and demographic variables such as age group.

Removal of Cr (VI) in solution using Theobroma cacao L.: Simulation of an industrial-scale packed column

Candelaria Nahir Tejada Tovar — 2025-07-21

Introduction: Many studies have been developed using techniques to remove pollutants in water bodies. Among these techniques is adsorption, a surface technique that uses an adsorbent based on agricultural residues to remove pollutants such as heavy metals. However, these studies have mostly been conducted at a laboratory scale, and few investigations have sought to anticipate the effectiveness of the adsorbent at an industrial scale.

Objective: To simulate the removal of Cr(VI) in solution by a packed column at industrial scale using Theobroma cacao L. biomass as adsorbent.

Method: A modeling and simulation type method was used where the computer tool Aspen Adsorption was employed to simulate the adsorption column using different configurations combined with a parametric evaluation.

Results: From the findings it was obtained that, using the Langmuir and Linear Driving Force (LDF) mathematical models, adsorption process efficiencies of up to 97% Cr (VI) removal were presented. In addition, the best parametric values were a column height of 5m, a flow rate of 100 m³/day and an initial concentration of 3500 mg/L.

Conclusions: These findings allow presenting this study as a novel way in the engineering field of how computational tools have the ability to predict the possible behavior of adsorption columns packed with organic waste-based biomasses.

Urdaneta Business Architecture: A Specialized Model for Strategic Commercial Management in Industrial Environments across Latin America

David Julio Urdaneta Ocando — 2025-10-17

Introduction: Commercial management in industrial environments faces challenges related to high competitiveness, digitalization, and the need to build long-term customer relationships. In this context, the Urdaneta Business Architecture emerges as a comprehensive model that structures commercial processes into sequential phases, thereby strengthening business sustainability and productivity.

Objective: To analyze the implementation of the Urdaneta Business Architecture in five Latin American companies, with the purpose of identifying its impact on market identification, segmentation, value proposition design, consultative sales execution, and post-sales follow-up.

Methodology: A systematic literature review was conducted on publications from 2020 to 2025 available in the Scopus database, complemented by five corporate reports and interviews with commercial managers. The information was organized according to the five phases of the model, allowing for a transversal analysis of results.

Results: The application of the model enabled the companies to reduce commercial dispersion by focusing on strategic sectors, achieve customer segmentation rates above 70% in three cases, and improve the proposal-to-contract conversion rate within a range of 15% to 25%. Likewise, two companies consolidated a cultural shift toward consultative selling, attaining a 20% increase in key customer retention. Post-sales monitoring showed heterogeneous progress, with two firms reaching satisfaction levels above 85%.

Conclusions: The Urdaneta Business Architecture proved to be an effective framework for evolving from generalist practices toward consultative, focused, and value-oriented processes, contributing to sales growth, customer loyalty, and commercial sustainability in industrial markets.

Physicochemical and Nutritional Properties of Plant-Based Burger Patties: The Role of Hydrocolloids and Pea Protein

Remigio Yamid Pismag Portilla — 2025-08-19

One of the main challenges in the development of plant-based meat analogs is replicating the physicochemical and textural properties of conventional processed meat products. This issue has gained relevance due to the increasing global demand for alternative protein sources. Among these, plant proteins have achieved broad acceptance owing to their availability, functional versatility, and suitability for incorporation into diverse food matrices, such as plant-based burger patties. Moisture content and retention are critical quality parameters in the formulation of plant-based burger patties, as they directly influence consumer perception of freshness and overall product quality. juicy mouthfeel, which is characteristic of traditional meat-based patties. Nevertheless, moisture addition should be carefully evaluated, as an imbalance with the product´s structural texture can negatively affect sensory perception. The incorporation of water-holding ingredients is one of the most effective strategies to reduce water loss during the processing of plant-based burger patties. These ingredients—mainly hydrocolloids and plant-based protein isolates—exhibit a strong affinity for both free water and the structural components of the food matrix. However, the proportion and interaction of these water-holding agents must be carefully evaluated, as they may also introduce formulation challenges or compromise other functional and nutritional attributes of the final product. To investigate these effects, the present study evaluated formulations containing water (85% – 90%), pea protein isolate (5% - 10%), and a commercial hydrocolloid (5% - 10%) using an extreme vertices mixture design. The results indicate that hydrocolloid concentration significantly influences the water content of fried plant-based burger patties, resulting in a softer texture. However, this higher moisture content is also linked to an increased fat absorption during frying, with fat levels rising more than 15%. Furthermore, increasing level of added pea protein isolate improves in-vitro protein digestibility (thereby contributing to an enhanced nutritional profile. However, increased protein levels also lead to higher shear/compression force values (>300 N), negatively affecting texture. These findings highlight the dual impact of water-holding ingredients on the physicochemical and nutritional attributes of the plant-based burger patties. Therefore, precise adjustment of hydrocolloid and protein isolate concentrations is essential to optimize the balance between texture, moisture retention, fat content, and nutrient availability.

The Relationship Between Physical Activity Levels and Academic Stress in University Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

Emir Abraham Machado Nuñez — 2025-10-27

Introduction: Academic stress is a prevalent issue in higher education that negatively affects students' mental health and performance. Physical activity is considered a key protective factor, but there is a knowledge gap regarding this relationship in the specific context of Colombian universities. This study aims to fill that gap.

Objective: To analyze the relationship between the level of physical activity and the perception of academic stress in undergraduate students at Corporación Universitaria Latinoamericana (CUL).

Method: A quantitative, descriptive-correlational, cross-sectional study was conducted. A digital survey was administered to a convenience sample of 50 students, using adapted questions from the validated IPAQ and SISCO instruments to measure physical activity and stress, respectively.

Results: A high prevalence of sedentary behavior was found (44% of the sample). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant inverse relationship (p = 0.005) between the variables: the sedentary student group reported the highest average stress level (M=3.48), while the most active group reported the lowest (M=2.19).

Conclusions: The higher the level of physical activity, the lower the perception of academic stress in the studied sample. It is concluded that physical activity is a significant protective factor for student well-being, and its integration as a strategic component in university mental health policies is recommended.