Editorial

Abstract

A recognized statement states that change is the only constant in life. Societies, organizations, and people evolve, change, to adapt or anticipate the challenges of their environments. These changes in turn engender new changes, which causes these evolutions to accelerate. To the point at which, the advances that are taking place today have never been so massive or of such magnitude.

It is within this framework that, starting with this issue, I have the pleasure of once again collaborating as co-editor of the Latin American Journal of Computing. I was fortunate to work, until three years ago, under the direction of Jenny Torres Olmedo, PhD., when she was editor-in-chief. And now I have the honor of supporting Denys Flores Arnas, PhD., and his team in this scientific dissemination challenge. The entire team of the journal has worked very hard to bring you this issue, and we have several initiatives that will be implemented in future issues and of which we will have news very soon.

The articles selected for this issue gather interesting contributions from the different fields of computing. Thus, José Sillagana, Daniel Morocho-Lara, Génesis Dayana Pinto and Yennifer Bustos Gamboa present a mixed experimental study focused on the contribution of gamification in the learning of Mathematics in basic education. In their work, these authors report the contributions of the development of web 3.0 authoring resources for Canvas, Liveworksheet and Nearpood.

Luis Pineda, Bayron S. Gutiérrez, Marcos Orellana Cordero and Jorge Luis Zambrano-Martínez present their results on the implementation of layered encryption methods through distributed systems using SOAP. Their work allows to increase the security of the data that is sent from an origin to its destination with a minimum consumption of computational resources in the system.

In their article, Cristhian H. Bastidas Paz and Héctor F. Chinchero Villacís present an energy management system for intelligent buildings using distributed generation. For this, the authors use a control system based on a microcomputer, which defines a control algorithm based on different scenarios where the energy rules for each of the building services are determined. As a result, reductions of about 50% in energy consumption are reported.

Carlos A. Aguirre and Carlos E. Anchundia report the results of the development of a middleware for the interconnection of a mobile application with a legacy system. To do this, the authors worked on a reengineering process for the legacy system, developed methods for data translation, applied security controls, and redesigned user interfaces to adapt them to a mobile environment.

The work of Brian Jordano Cagua Gómez, Julia Edith Pilatasig Caizaguano and Roberto Rodrigo Aguiar Falconí focuses on contributing, through static nonlinear analysis, a method for the evaluation of steel frames. New functionalities of the system for seismic-structural analysis CEINCI LAB are presented.

Sergio Jiménez and Andrés Merino present the application of machine learning models based on CRISP-DM to analyze the levels of depression in students at an Ecuadorian university. The authors conducted a study with 302 students consisting of the Beck Depression Inventory II. From their work, a model with 0.59 accuracy was obtained and it was verified that the variables of gender, age and interpersonal relationships are the most significant when determining the severity of depression.

We hope these articles will be an interesting contribution for our readers. We invite all our audience to continue sending with their contributions. We keep the door open for any concerns and contacts with us and with the authors of the contributions presented in this issue.