Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

La pandemia de COVID-19 incidió en la inclusión del personal sanitario al Libro V del Código Sanitario mediante un proyecto de ley que refunde cinco mociones parlamentarias. Sin perjuicio de esto, en el año 2018 se convocó a una mesa de trabajo para la actualización de este cuerpo legal, del cual se emite un informe técnico que es entregado al Ejecutivo para la elaboración de un Proyecto de Ley. Sin embargo, esto último no ocurrió. En la actualidad, existen cuatro insumos para actualizar este texto: el actual Libro V, la propuesta del informe técnico, la propuesta del Legislativo, y la propuesta del Ejecutivo mediante las indicaciones del proyecto de Ley del Legislativo. Se analizan estos textos en cuanto a su contenido general, definición de los roles profesionales, y las incompatibilidades en el ejercicio de la profesión. Es necesario incluir y definir el rol y la autonomía profesional soportado por una fuerza de trabajo planificada, de calidad, que aborde apropiadamente los conflictos de intereses, con periurbano un fortalecimiento del control ético, para así responder de manera efectiva y equitativa a las necesidades de la población.

The production of clean electrical energy and the correct use of waste materials are two topics that currently concern humanity. In order to face both problems, extensive work has been done on the electrolytic production of green H2 coupled with the electrooxidative upgrading of biomass platform molecules. 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is obtained from forest waste biomass and can be selectively oxidized to 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) by electrochemical pathways. FDCA is an attractive precursor to polyethylene furanoate (PEF), with the potential to replace petroleum-based polyethylene terephthalate (PET). An integrated electrochemical system can simultaneously produce H2 and FDCA at a lower energy cost than that required for electrolytic water splitting. Here, the benefits of the electrochemical production of H2 and FDCA over other production methods are presented, as well as the innovative applications of each reaction product and the advantages of carrying out both reactions in a coupled system. The recently reported progress is disclosed, through an exploration of electrocatalyst materials used in simultaneous production, including the use of nickel foams (NF) as modification substrates, noble and non-noble metals, metal non-oxides, metal oxides, spinel oxides and the introduction of oxygen vacancies. Based on the latest trends, the next challenges associated with its large-scale production are proposed for its implementation in the industrial world. This work can offer a guideline for the detailed understanding of the electrooxidation of HMF towards FDCA with the production of H2, as well as the design of advanced electrocatalysts for the sustainable use of renewable resources.

This section offers a muestra—a sampling or display—of major works of Latin American digital poetry. Authored by experts in the field, these 25 short entries analyze the canon of digital poetry from Latin America. Each entry consists of: (1) a technical description of the work; (2) a brief contextualization of the work (referencing typologies, generational schema, and taxonomies); (3) an analysis of the e-poetics of the digital work; (4) minimal (e-) bibliography (about the author/in general); and (5) QR codes linking to the author’s work. This “sample” of trends in Latin American digital poetics is not meant to be exhaustive; rather, it seeks to situate some key features of these emergent forms in larger computational, literary, and cultural contexts.

Damage from past earthquakes has significantly hampered post-earthquake building function, threatening community resilience, and motivating consideration of functional recovery in building design and assessment. This study examines whether it is feasible to achieve functional recovery in retrofit of existing reinforced concrete buildings, focusing on seven buildings retrofit with various motivations and strategies. The seismic response of these buildings was nonlinearly simulated, and functional recovery was probabilistically assessed. The results show that retrofits targeting life safety may or may not achieve functional recovery goals. Achieving functional recovery depends especially on the reduction of drift demands and collapse probability. However, the acceleration increase associated with many retrofits can increase function loss due to the criticality of acceleration-sensitive nonstructural components if such components are not retrofitted. We also examine other performance metrics, that is, economic losses and immediate occupancy limits of ASCE/SEI 41, showing that these provide imprecise, and in the case of the immediate occupancy conservative, proxies for functional recovery.

Decision diagrams (DDs) are graphical structures that can be used to solve discrete optimization problems by representing the set of feasible solutions as paths in a graph. This graphical encoding of the feasibility set can represent complex combinatorial structures and is the foundation of several novel optimization techniques. Due to their flexibility, DDs have become an attractive optimization tool for researchers in different fields, including operations research and computer science.

Intertidal ecology has been considered the cradle of modern marine ecology with insightful investigations on the biological and ecological mechanisms allowing “life between the tides”. Most of the early investigations focused on macrophytes (seagrasses and macroalgae) and benthic invertebrates inhabiting emerged intertidal substrata. However, tidepools also shelter a rich fauna, including fishes, which display a wide diversity and a variety of ecological interactions and functions. Here, we review the diversity, ecology, evolution and conservation of the American tidepool fishes, from definition to trophic roles, ecological vulnerabilities and societal importance that reveal an extraordinary biodiversity and the important roles fishes play in the coastal ecosystems. Tidepool fish studies increased sharply from the mid twentieth century onwards, but many geographic gaps still exist. Tidepool fishes connect marine and terrestrial communities via substantial predation upon insects and exporting energy to land as prey for terrestrial fauna. Sea-level rise driven by climate change will reduce or eliminate current intertidal habitats, where little or no space is available for landward accommodation in the supralittoral zone. Concurrently, tidepool habitat would be ‘squeezed’ to a narrow intertidal stripe by ‘coastal squeeze’ process. Endemic, habitat-restricted, and specialist species could be particularly affected by human-induced habitat loss on the coastal stripe. Tidepool fishes provide many ecological services, such as well-being, environmental awareness, outdoor recreation, and bioinspiration for ancient and current societies. The level of intertidal rocky shore protection varies among American countries, but in most cases rocky shores are included in the least effective protection categories allowing extractive activities.

Resumen Las instituciones de educación superior han experimentado cambios relevantes durante las últimas décadas. Estos cambios obligan a las universidades a comportarse como organizaciones de mercado en un entorno competitivo con el objetivo de recaudar recursos de la matrícula, dificultando según registra la literatura especializada el cumplimiento del rol de la universidad pública. Dado que las tasas de matrícula son la principal entrada financiera de las universidades estatales chilenas, se han visto obligadas a transformar su estructura de gobierno para ser competitivas, atraer estudiantes y así obtener financiamiento. Este artículo tiene por objetivo examinar cómo el gobierno y la gestión de una universidad estatal chilena enfrentan las presiones para posicionarse competitivamente en la captación de estudiantes de pregrado. La hipótesis que guía este estudio es que dichas presiones generan una serie de tensiones organizacionales y culturales en la administración central. Estudiamos una universidad estatal chilena con investigación y de gran tamaño a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas con directivos de nivel central. Analizamos las estrategias desarrolladas por la institución en el mercado educativo y las tensiones emergentes que surgen de la transformación, considerando la identidad institucional. Los resultados muestran que la universidad cambia su estructura organizacional debido a las presiones del entorno, principalmente mediante el diseño de planes estratégicos y la incorporación de nuevo personal profesional para mejorar su posición en el mercado educativo. La universidad adapta estas innovaciones como parte de su cultura institucional dentro del nuevo marco de gestión pública. El artículo finaliza con un resumen y sugerencias para futuros estudios sobre el cambio organizacional en las universidades estatales.

Hazardous materials such as fuel, solvents, organic waste from hospitals, used batteries, explosives, and nuclear waste need to be transported to and from the facilities that use, produce, and dispose of them. Managing these transports requires a design that alleviates negative effects of these activities, such as the loss of lives, environmental damage, and the destruction of property. Despite the large body of literature addressing numerous aspects regarding hazardous materials, there is no clear consensus on how potential adverse effects should be measured when optimizing facility location and route design. Our analysis commences with a look at the primary stakeholders in these activities: the population that is potentially affected by transportation, the firms that pay for it, and the government regulator, whose task is to protect the population at large. This chapter proposes two new indicators related to these activities, which are easy to compute, avoid the use of unreliable very low probability estimations, take care of the regulatory agencies and public concern, and, in our view, are more understandable to the public. Mathematical programming problems that integrate criteria for all stakeholders are formulated and solved. The methodology is then applied to a real case in order to determine an optimal transport route for the transport of hazardous materials in and out of the city of Santiago, Chile.

In many situations, customers choose the facilities they want to interact with. One possible objective of the facility managers is to maximize the number of customers who use their facilities. In order to achieve this objective, they will need to make decisions regarding the features of their facilities, such as product variety, parking space, ambiance, prices, and, not least, the location of these facilities, particularly relative to the location of customers and possible competitors. To make their facilities attract as many customers as possible, the firms need to know what makes customers behave the way they do. Unfortunately for the firms, customer behavior is uncertain. This chapter examines the sources of customer-related uncertainty. These include the occurrence of unplanned purchases, the taste for variety—given product heterogeneity, imperfect information available to the customers about product and store features, and imperfect information on customers available to decision-makers. The effects of these uncertainties on customers’ behavior are also described: purchases distributed among all competitors, comparison shopping, multipurpose trips, and price and feature search. This behavior results in facility locations different from those obtained using models that do not consider uncertainty. In particular, we do see more agglomeration. The chapter then describes some models that include customer probabilistic choice rules and demonstrates how these rules can be integrated into facility location models.

The incidence of breast cancer in young women (BCYW) has increased in recent decades. Malignant disease in this subset is characterized by its aggressiveness and poor prognosis. Ovarian function suppression (OFS) in these patients improves survival especially in hormone receptor-positive (HR +) cases. The Regan Composite Risk (RCR) is a prognostic tool to identify high-risk HR + BC candidates for OFS. Our study sought to characterize a Chilean cohort of early HR + BCYW assessing the use of OFS and its related prognosis and the utility of RCR in our patients. This was a retrospective population cohort study that included ≤ 35-year-old early HR + /human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 -negative (HER2-) BC patients treated between 2001 and 2021. Analysis included clinical-pathological characteristics, treatment strategies, and survival. Also, we evaluated the association between RCR and survival. A total of 143 patients were included into our study, representing 2.9% of all early BC cases in our registry. Median age was 31 years old (range: 19–35). Most patients (93%) received endocrine therapy (ET). Of these, 18% received OFS. No survival differences were observed among treatment strategies. Median RCR score for patients treated with CT plus ET was significantly higher vs. ET alone (2.95 vs. 1.91; p = 0.0001). Conversely, patients treated with tamoxifen alone had significantly lower RCR scores vs. OFS (2.72 vs. 3.14; p = 0.04). Higher RCR scores were associated with poorer overall survival. Less than 20% of very young women with early HR + /HER2-BC in our cohort received OFS, in most cases, this involved surgical oophorectomy. RCR score was higher in patients that underwent CT and OFS and was associated with survival, regardless of treatment. We confirm the RCR score as a valuable prognostic tool to identify high-risk BC patients who could benefit from OFS.

Global health emergencies present opportunities for countries to enhance their soft power by demonstrating generosity and technological capabilities. Although China’s initial association with the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak had a detrimental impact on its international reputation, the country endeavored to rebuild it by visibly distributing vaccines and medical supplies. By countering U.S. vaccine nationalism, China positioned itself as an alternative provider of public goods in the Global South. The COVID-19 crisis provides a unique opportunity to examine how aid translates into reputation, particularly when donors are facing reputational damage. This article assesses the impact of alternative goods provision on China’s reputation using original individual-level panel data collected from six Latin American countries between 2020 and 2021, employing a difference-in-differences research design. By positing the existence of absolute and relative reputational effects, we observe that Chinese vaccines improve public opinion of China and elevate its reputation in comparison to the United States. These findings are substantiated through a survey experiment, which demonstrates that when individuals receive information about China’s provision of medical supplies, it enhances China’s reputation relative to the United States.

Low-temperature non-thermal plasmas produce highly reactive chemical environments made up of electrons, ions, radicals, and vibrationally excited molecules. These reactive species, when combined with catalysts, can help drive thermodynamically unfavorable chemical reactions at low temperatures and atmospheric pressure. The conversion of methane (CH4) to produce other value-added chemicals is a good model system because of its applicability to a wide range of industries. To effectively create these plasma catalytic systems, a fundamental understanding of the plasma-phase chemistry alone is imperative. While there have been many studies on methane plasmas and how certain operating conditions (i.e., gas composition and power) affect the plasma, there is limited understanding on how changing bulk reaction temperature affects the plasma properties and ensuing plasma chemistry. In this work, we use a dielectric barrier discharge to investigate the effects of temperature on the reaction chemistry and the plasma’s electrical properties in various methane-gas mixtures. Results show that increasing temperature leads to a reduction in methane conversion as well as changes to both the gas and dielectric material pre-breakdown, which manifests itself in temperature-dependent electrical properties of the plasma. Experiments at various temperatures and power show a positive correlation between key electrical plasma properties (average charge and lifetime per filament) and the measured methane conversion as a function of temperature.

Overweight and obesity in adults are known to be associated with increased risk of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. Obesity has now reached epidemic proportions, increasingly affecting children. Therefore, it is important to understand if this condition persists from early life to childhood and if different patterns can be detected to inform intervention policies. Our motivating application is a study of temporal patterns of obesity in children from South Eastern Asia. Our main focus is on clustering obesity patterns after adjusting for the effect of baseline information. Specifically, we consider a joint model for height and weight over time. Measurements are taken every six months from birth. To allow for data-driven clustering of trajectories, we assume a vector autoregressive sampling model with a dependent logit stick-breaking prior. Simulation studies show good performance of the proposed model to capture overall growth patterns, as compared to other alternatives. We also fit the model to the motivating dataset, and discuss the results, in particular highlighting cluster differences. We have found four large clusters, corresponding to children sub-groups, though two of them are similar in terms of both height and weight at each time point. We provide interpretation of these clusters in terms of combinations of predictors.

Building on work by Chabauty from 1941, Coleman proved in 1985 an explicit bound for the number of rational points of a curve $C$ of genus $g\ge 2$ defined over a number field $F$, with Jacobian of rank at most $g-1$. Namely, in the case $F=\mathbb{Q}$, if $p>2g$ is a prime of good reduction, then the number of rational points of $C$ is at most the number of $\mathbb{F}_p$-points plus a contribution coming from the canonical class of $C$. We prove a result analogous to Coleman's bound in the case of a hyperbolic surface $X$ over a number field, embedded in an abelian variety $A$ of rank at most one, under suitable conditions on the reduction type at the auxiliary prime. This provides the first extension of Coleman's explicit bound beyond the case of curves. The main innovation in our approach is a new method to study the intersection of a $p$-adic analytic subgroup with a subvariety of $A$ by means of overdetermined systems of differential equations in positive characteristic.

In this study, we examine the long-term trajectory of violence in societies that inhabited the coast of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile using three lines of evidence: bioarchaeology, geoarchaeology and socio-cultural contexts (rock art, weapons, and settlement patterns). These millennia-old populations adopted a way of life, which they maintained for 10,000 years, based on fishing, hunting, and maritime gathering, complementing this with terrestrial resources. We analyzed 288 adult individuals to search for traumas resulting from interpersonal violence and used strontium isotopes ⁸⁷ Sr/ ⁸⁶ Sr as a proxy to evaluate whether individuals that showed traces of violence were members of local or non-local groups. Moreover, we evaluated settlement patterns, rock art, and weapons. The results show that the violence was invariant during the 10,000 years in which these groups lived without contact with the western world. During the Formative Period (1000 BC-AD 500), however, the type of violence changed, with a substantial increase in lethality. Finally, during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450), violence and lethality remained similar to that of the Formative Period. The chemical signal of Sr shows a low frequency of individuals who were coastal outsiders, suggesting that violence occurred between local groups. Moreover, the presence of weapons and rock art depicting scenes of combat supports the notion that these groups engaged in violence. By contrast, the settlement pattern shows no defensive features. We consider that the absence of centralized political systems could have been a causal factor in explaining violence, together with the fact that these populations were organized in small-scale grouping. Another factor may have been competition for the same resources in the extreme environments of the Atacama Desert. Finally, from the Formative Period onward, we cannot rule out a certain level of conflict between fishers and their close neighbors, the horticulturalists.

This study aimed to develop a 3D method for assessing ventilation/perfusion (V/Q̇) ratios in a pig model of hemodynamic perturbations using electrical impedance tomography (EIT). In order to evaluate the physiological coherence of changes in EIT-derived V/Q̇ ratios, global EIT-derived V/Q̇ mismatches were compared with global gold-standards. The study found regional heterogeneity in the distribution of V/Q̇ ratios in both the ventrodorsal and craniocaudal directions. Although global EIT-derived indices of V/Q̇ mismatch consistently underestimated both low and high V/Q̇ mismatch compared to global gold standards, the direction of the change was similar. We made the software available at no cost for other researchers to use. Future studies should compare regional V/Q̇ ratios determined by our method against other regional, high-resolution methods.

Nitrate supply is fundamental to support shoot growth and crop performance, but the associated increase in stem height exacerbates the risks of lodging and yield losses. Despite their significance for agriculture, the mechanisms involved in the promotion of stem growth by nitrate remain poorly understood. Here, we show that the elongation of the hypocotyl of Arabidopsis thaliana , used as a model, responds rapidly and persistently to upshifts in nitrate concentration, rather than to the nitrate level itself. The response occurred even in shoots dissected from their roots and required NITRATE TRANSPORTER 1.1 (NRT1.1) in the phosphorylated state (but not NRT1.1 nitrate transport capacity) and NIN-LIKE PROTEIN 7 (NLP7). Nitrate increased PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTOR 4 (PIF4) nuclear abundance by posttranscriptional mechanisms that depended on NRT1.1 and phytochrome B. In response to nitrate, PIF4 enhanced the expression of numerous SMALL AUXIN-UP RNA (SAUR) genes in the hypocotyl. The growth response to nitrate required PIF4, positive and negative regulators of its activity, including AUXIN RESPONSE FACTORs, and SAURs. PIF4 integrates cues from the soil (nitrate) and aerial (shade) environments adjusting plant stature to facilitate access to light.