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This exploratory observational study analyzes the variation of the amount of vertical electrons (vTEC) in the ionosphere, days before to the telluric events with a degree greater than M7.0 during the year 2016. Sixteen events were analyzed with these characteristics. The data was obtained from 55 satellites and 300 GPS receivers. This data was downloaded from the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE). The measurement of the vTEC is done at a height of 450km, and from these values, ionospheric anomalies are calculated. These disturbances are detected assuming that in a time gap window of 8 days the vTEC data has a normal distribution. The vTEC data used for the analysis consists in the variations out of the ranges considered normal. The data is downloaded with software developed by our laboratory and generates maps of the vTEC present in the ionosphere with a periodicity of two hours, delivering data from 17 days before to 4 days after. The analysis area is a circle with 1000 km radius centered at the epicenter of every earthquake. Afterwards, these areas were analyzed and the vTEC, registering the information in this study. It was found that in 100% of the earthquakes there is a significant and positive variation in the vTEC, a negative variation in the 81.25% of the events. It was also found a vTEC variation 6 days before every telluric event in 100% of the cases. This study is a preliminary analysis that shows us the feasibility to analyze this information to obtain evidence of causality, which is the next step of our study, calculating the risk of telluric events in beforehand that could benefit worldwide population.

Conventional methods to diagnose anemia require a blood draw. This generates a great problem in patients due to the fear of contracting a disease through syringes, or sensitivity to this element. The palpebral conjunctiva is an indicator of diseases such as the hordeolum, chalazion, marginal blepharitis, bacterial conjunctivitis, trachoma, and anemia. The palpebral conjunctiva pallor is an indicator of anemia and if we wanted to develop an automatic system, for the non-invasive diagnosis of anemia based on the analysis of photographs of the palpebral conjunctiva, we would need algorithms for the segmentation and analysis of this membrane. In this sense, this research proposes and develops a method for the automatic segmentation of the palpebral conjunctiva using an Android application and image processing techniques. As a result, the success of this segmentation method is 92.2%.

This is a descriptive study aimed to know the knowledge that the university students have about blood donation. A study from the US shows that people with tertiary education have more probability to donate blood [1]. The sampled population consisted in students of two universities studying Science, Engineering and Biology. A total of 114 individuals were approached of which 19 did not wish to proceed or did not complete the questionnaire leaving a total of 95 study participants. The questionnaire was divided into three sections. The first section refers to the potential benefits of blood donation and asks participants about their views on 23 benefit statements. Each statement has been assessed by an average of 43 individuals with approval scores of 75%. Of the study population it was found that 80% did not have prior knowledge of the benefits of blood donation. The second part contained 15 questions designed to identify if participants' are eligible or not for blood donation. It was found that 47%, 35%, and 18% of participants were eligible, not eligible, or undetermined for donating blood respectively. The third section of the questionnaire identifies the participants' willingness to donate blood following exposure to information on its potential benefits. It was found that 52.63%, 38.95%, and 8.42 % of participants had the same, more, or less willingness after exposure to information than before the questionnaire respectively. The results show us that it is possible to influence the target population's will to donate blood after their exposure to acknowledge the blood donation benefits. The statements, about blood donation benefits, with higher score were chosen. The ultimate goal of this study is to raise awareness of blood donation and to increase participation during campaigns on university campuses. The research group keeps working on preventive health and changing the picture of voluntary blood donation.

Pneumonia is one of the major causes of child mortality, but it is curable if one can achieves early diagnostics. Unfortunately, in developing countries there is a lack of infrastructure and medical experts in rural areas to provide the required diagnostics opportunely. Lung ultrasound echography has proved to be an important tool to detect lung consolidates as evidence of pneumonia. The use of ultrasound to detect pneumonia is limited by the image analysis for interpretation, which is carried by human experts. Pattern recognition and image analysis is a potential tool to facilitate recognition of pneumonia consolidates in absence of medical experts for automatic diagnostics. To perform an automatic analysis of lung ultrasound images for pneumonia detection, the noise introduced by the image portion of the skin, notably complicates the processing and interpretation. This paper presents a methodology to recognize and eliminate the portion of the skin in lung ultrasound images.