Risk factors for COVID-19 and their association with mortality in Ecuadorian patients admitted to the ICU: A retrospective cohort multicentric study.

Several risk factors were associated with mortality in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection in intensive care units (ICU). We assessed the effect of risk factors related to the characteristics and clinical history of the population, laboratory test results, drug management, and type of ventilation on the probability of survival/discharge from the ICU. A retrospective cohort multicentric study of adults with COVID-19 admitted to the ICU between March 2020 and December 2021.

ADAM: a robotic companion for enhanced quality of life in aging populations.

One of the major problems of today's society is the rapid aging of its population. Life expectancy is increasing, but the quality of life is not. Faced with the growing number of people who require cognitive or physical assistance, new technological tools are emerging to help them.

Sensor Fusion for Social Navigation on a Mobile Robot Based on Fast Marching Square and Gaussian Mixture Model.

Mobile robot navigation has been studied for a long time, and it is nowadays widely used in multiple applications. However, it is traditionally focused on two-dimensional geometric characteristics of the environments. There are situations in which robots need to share space with people, so additional aspects, such as social distancing, need to be considered.

A Multirobot System in an Assisted Home Environment to Support the Elderly in Their Daily Lives.

The increasing isolation of the elderly both in their own homes and in care homes has made the problem of caring for elderly people who live alone an urgent priority. This article presents a proposed design for a heterogeneous multirobot system consisting of (i) a small mobile robot to monitor the well-being of elderly people who live alone and suggest activities to keep them positive and active and (ii) a domestic mobile manipulating robot that helps to perform household tasks. The entire system is integrated in an automated home environment (AAL), which also includes a set of low-cost automation sensors, a medical monitoring bracelet and an Android application to propose emotional coaching activities to the person who lives alone.

Multi-LiDAR Mapping for Scene Segmentation in Indoor Environments for Mobile Robots.

Nowadays, most mobile robot applications use two-dimensional LiDAR for indoor mapping, navigation, and low-level scene segmentation. However, single data type maps are not enough in a six degree of freedom world. Multi-LiDAR sensor fusion increments the capability of robots to map on different levels the surrounding environment.

Path Planner for UAV Applications with Curvature Constraints: A Comparative Analysis with Other Planning Approaches.

This paper studies the Fast Marching Square (FM2) method as a competitive path planner for UAV applications. The approach fulfills trajectory curvature constraints together with a significantly reduced computation time, which makes it overperform with respect to other planning methods of the literature based on optimization. A comparative analysis is presented to demonstrate how the FM2 approach can easily adapt its performance thanks to the introduction of two parameters, saturation α and exponent β, that allow a flexible configuration of the paths in terms of curvature restrictions, among others.

Effect of High Altitude on the Survival of COVID-19 Patients in Intensive Care Unit: A Cohort Study.

The effect of high altitude ( ≥ 1500 m) and its potential association with mortality by COVID-19 remains controversial. We assessed the effect of high altitude on the survival/discharge of COVID-19 patients requiring intensive care unit (ICU) admission for mechanical ventilation compared to individuals treated at sea level. A retrospective cohort multi-center study of consecutive adults patients with a positive RT-PCR test for COVID-19 who were mechanically ventilated between March and November 2020.

Multi UAV Coverage Path Planning in Urban Environments.

Coverage path planning (CPP) is a field of study which objective is to find a path that covers every point of a certain area of interest. Recently, the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has become more proficient in various applications such as surveillance, terrain coverage, mapping, natural disaster tracking, transport, and others. The aim of this paper is to design efficient coverage path planning collision-avoidance capable algorithms for single or multi UAV systems in cluttered urban environments.

Path Planning and Collision Risk Management Strategy for Multi-UAV Systems in 3D Environments.

Multi-UAV systems are attracting, especially in the last decade, the attention of researchers and companies of very different fields due to the great interest in developing systems capable of operating in a coordinated manner in complex scenarios and to cover and speed up applications that can be dangerous or tedious for people: search and rescue tasks, inspection of facilities, delivery of goods, surveillance, etc. Inspired by these needs, this work aims to design, implement and analyze a trajectory planning and collision avoidance strategy for multi-UAV systems in 3D environments. For this purpose, a study of the existing techniques for both problems is carried out and an innovative strategy based on Fast Marching Square-for the planning phase-and a simple priority-based speed control-as the method for conflict resolution-is proposed, together with prevention measures designed to try to limit and reduce the greatest number of conflicting situations that may occur between vehicles while they carry out their missions in a simulated 3D urban environment.

Marine Applications of the Fast Marching Method.

Path planning is general problem of mobile robots, which has special characteristics when applied to marine applications. In addition to avoid colliding with obstacles, in marine scenarios, environment conditions such as water currents or wind need to be taken into account in the path planning process. In this paper, several solutions based on the Fast Marching Method are proposed.

Cancer risk associated with living at high altitude in Ecuadorian population from 2005 to 2014.

Background And Aims: Cancer is a leading cause of death in Ecuador with high social and economic impact. This study aims to determinate the influence of living at a high altitude on the risk of developing or dying from cancer among the Ecuadorian population.

Methods: This is an ecological and epidemiological analysis of cancer mortality and prevalence rates, based on national data from the Ecuadorian National Statistics and Census Institute, corresponding to the period between 2005 and 2014.

Clinical characterization and antimicrobial resistance of Escherichia coli in pediatric patients with urinary tract infection at a third level hospital of Quito, Ecuador.

Background: Urinary tract infections (UTI) are among the most common infections in pediatric patients. The main etiopathogenic agent is Escherichia coli. The purpose of this study was to determine the antimicrobial resistance pattern of E.

Kullback-Leibler Divergence-Based Differential Evolution Markov Chain Filter for Global Localization of Mobile Robots.

One of the most important skills desired for a mobile robot is the ability to obtain its own location even in challenging environments. The information provided by the sensing system is used here to solve the global localization problem. In our previous work, we designed different algorithms founded on evolutionary strategies in order to solve the aforementioned task.