University of Brasília

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted rapid adaptations in healthcare systems worldwide. Academic medical centers, pivotal in healthcare education and research, rapidly adopted innovations. Brazilian state-owned university hospitals experienced unprecedented pressure on their services and were compelled to adopt new approaches to education and care delivery.

Analyze the organizational agility and resilience of two Brazilian federal university hospitals during the pandemic. Identify crisis-driven innovations and propose a quantitative indicator framework to measure agility, resilience, and the embedding of innovations post-crisis.

We conducted a document analysis of the COVID-19 contingency plans, managerial reports and news items from the two hospitals, both managed by the Brazilian Hospital Services Company. Actions were inductively coded and synthesized into measurable indicators.

The hospitals implemented tactical and operational adjustments, relocated resources, and improved patient care strategies. Telemedicine and strategic patient transfers empowered users during critical phases. Virtual care technologies promoted self-care and improved treatment efficacy, while staff well-being programs supported clinical teams. We present an indicator framework comprising 26 metrics, organized into pandemic-phase (agility and resilience) and post-COVID (innovation) blocks.

The contingency plans demonstrate strong organizational agility and resilience. The proposed framework offers a practical toolkit for benchmarking crisis readiness and tracking the institutionalization of pandemic-era innovations, thereby supporting Brazil's universal healthcare system and guiding future research.

The Neotropical brown stink bug,Euschistus heros(Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), is a major agricultural pest in Brazilian soybean crops, exhibiting increasing insecticide resistance in field. This study investigates the dynamics ofEuschistus herosvirus (EhV), a multispecies iflavirus, in laboratory populations ofE. heros, revealing a persistent, systemic virus infection across all life stages. Screening of 99 adults showed 100 % EhV genome prevalence in mated individuals, while virgin males and females had an 80 % infection rate. Viral loads peaked in freshly laid eggs (590,462 ± 27,426 copies/ng RNA), suggesting likely maternal transmission, before declining sharply in nymphs with an 18.08-fold reduction by the fifth instar. Adults exhibited sex- and mating-status-dependent variation, with virgin females harboring the highest copy number (227,380 ± 144,938 copies/ng RNA), which is 2.87-fold higher than mated females. Tissue-specific analysis revealed elevated EhV genome accumulation in legs/wings (221,723 ± 102,120 copies/ng RNA in males) and heads, with significantly lower loads in thoraces and abdomens. Strand-specific RT-qPCR suggested that EhV may exhibit replicative activity across developmental stages, as indicated by approximately balanced levels of genomic and replicative strands. Additionally, transmission electron microscopy of antennal tissues from an infected male individual revealed cytoplasmic icosahedral virions (∼30 nm), providing the first ultrastructural evidence of EhV assembly. These findings suggest that EhV may establish a stable, replicative association with E. heros and point to vertical transmission as a plausible mechanism of persistence. Nonetheless, confirmation of this pattern will require additional analyses with larger sample sizes, field collected insects, and complementary experimental approaches.

Ordinal knowledge plays a foundational role in early mathematics, yet little is known about how different forms of ordinal representation support preschoolers' arithmetic. The present study investigated whether two types of count-list-based ordinal representations-rote counting and number ordering-mediate the relationship between symbolic cardinal knowledge and arithmetic performance in preschool children. Sixty-four preschool children (mean age = 67.3 months) completed a battery of tasks assessing cardinality, rote counting, number ordering, and arithmetic. Mediation analyses revealed that both rote counting and number ordering fully mediated the relationship between symbolic number comparison and arithmetic performance. Importantly, analyses showed that these mediators differentially supported arithmetic depending on problem complexity: rote counting was more strongly associated with simpler addition problems, while flexible number ordering predicted performance on more complex addition problems typically solved with overt counting strategies. These findings highlight the heterogeneous nature of ordinal representations and underscore their role as early supports for arithmetic, even before elementary school. Implications for understanding early ordinal representations and its use on education practices are discussed.