Asociación entre nivel de actividad física y ambiente construido (accesibilidad, infraestructura y seguridad) en ocho países de Latinoamérica : estudio de corte-transversal

Introduction: Approximately 60% of people around the world do not perform the physical activity necessary to maintain adequate health (WHO, 2016). The aim of this study is to find the relationship between the physical activity level of the population between 15 and 65 years old living in urban areas of eight Latin American countries -Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela- and the built environment of these areas...Introducción: Aproximadamente 60% de las personas alrededor del mundo no realizan la actividad física necesaria para mantener una salud adecuada (OMS, 2016). El objetivo de este estudio es determinar la relación entre el nivel de actividad física de la población entre 15 y 65 años residentes en áreas urbanas de ocho países de Latinoamérica -Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Perú y Venezuela- y el ambiente construido de estas zonas..

Southern Hemisphere Humpback Whale Song in Pacific Central America

The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) is a species of marine mammal famed for its charisma and song. This thesis focuses on the population of whales that feeds in the Pacific waters off the coast of Chile and the Antarctic Peninsula and breeds in the Pacific waters off the coast of Ecuador and Central America, which constitutes a poorly known breeding ground. Studies have previously shown that these whales are capable of cultural transmission, which is to pass on song elements over space and time, allowing scientists to track them around the world. Cultural transmission implies acoustic contact and can assist in establishing migratory routes and population overlaps. This thesis has 3 distinct studies which have been segregated by chapters. The first and last chapters of this thesis serve as an introduction and conclusion respectively. In chapter 2, I describe the average breeding song of 2016 of Costa Rica using data collected with autonomous hydrophone recorders. I found 14 phrases grouped into 4 themes. This song changed over the season and varied between individuals, consistent with other studies. In chapter 3, I describe the pace of song change between the period of 2007-2017 using data collected in Panama and Costa Rica. The pace of change increased over this period, suggesting that this population is not acoustically isolated. In chapter 4, we examine the effects of engine noise of acoustic behavior. We find that whales are significantly more quiet in the presence of engine noise. In countries where ecotourism is present, like Costa Rica, the education of boat drivers and fishing industry is imperative to the preservation of this species. Countries fortunate enough to have these creatures call their waters home have an obligation to protect them against anthropogenic threats through education and the implementation of eco-friendly policy

Um modelo de maturidade colaborativa: proposta inicial e validaçao de conteúdo

This work seeks to: a) develop a concept of collaborative maturity, based on the adjusted systematization of the concept of collaborative governance elaborated by Emerson et al. (2015), perfecting the model previously elaborated by Costa (2016), and elements and questions usually present en established models of maturity; b) operationalize the concept, through the construction of an instrument for measuring collaborative maturity; and c) to test the validity of the content of the operationalization from the semantic validity of the instrument vis-à-vis the model of Emerson. The text is divided into five parts. An introduction addresses the methodological issues that pertain to the construction of models. Part two deals with collaborative governance and presents the systematization elaborated by Emerson et al. (2012). Part three deals with maturity and presents methodological issues related to the construction of maturity models. Part four deals with the construction of the collaborative maturity model and its validation of content. The last part elaborates considerations on limitations and follow-ups.Este trabalho busca: a) desenvolver um conceito de maturidade colaborativa, a partir da sistematização ajustada do conceito de governança colaborativa elaborada por Emerson e outros (2015), aperfeiçoando o modelo anteriormente elaborado por Costa (2016), e de elementos e questões usualmente presentes em modelos consagrados de maturidade; e b) operacionalizar o conceito, por meio da construção de um instrumento de mensuração da maturidade colaborativa; e c) testar a validade de conteúdo da operacionalização a partir da validade semântica do instrumento vis-à-vis o modelo de Emerson. O texto está divido em cinco partes. Uma introdução trata de apresentar as questões metodológicas que pertinem à construção de modelos. A parte dois trata de governança colaborativa e apresenta a sistematização elaborada por Emerson e outros (2012). A parte três trata de maturidade e apresenta questões metodológicas relacionadas à construção de modelos de maturidade. A parte quatro trata da construção do modelo de maturidade colaborativa e sua validação de conteúdo. A última parte elabora considerações sobre limitações e prosseguimentos

Chinese–Spanish neural machine translation enhanced with character and word bitmap fonts

Recently, machine translation systems based on neural networks have reached state-of-the-art results for some pairs of languages (e.g., German–English). In this paper, we are investigating the performance of neural machine translation in Chinese–Spanish, which is a challenging language pair. Given that the meaning of a Chinese word can be related to its graphical representation, this work aims to enhance neural machine translation by using as input a combination of: words or characters and their corresponding bitmap fonts. The fact of performing the interpretation of every word or character as a bitmap font generates more informed vectorial representations. Best results are obtained when using words plus their bitmap fonts obtaining an improvement (over a competitive neural MT baseline system) of almost six BLEU, five METEOR points and ranked coherently better in the human evaluation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Latin American perspectives to internationalize undergraduate information technology education

The computing education community expects modern curricular guidelines for information technology (IT) undergraduate degree programs by 2017. The authors of this work focus on eliciting and analyzing Latin American academic and industry perspectives on IT undergraduate education. The objective is to ensure that the IT curricular framework in the IT2017 report articulates the relationship between academic preparation and the work environment of IT graduates in light of current technological and educational trends in Latin America and elsewhere. Activities focus on soliciting and analyzing survey data collected from institutions and consortia in IT education and IT professional and educational societies in Latin America; these activities also include garnering the expertise of the authors. Findings show that IT degree programs are making progress in bridging the academic-industry gap, but more work remains

Foodways in transition: food plants, diet and local perceptions of change in a Costa Rican Ngäbe community

Background Indigenous populations are undergoing rapid ethnobiological, nutritional and socioeconomic transitions while being increasingly integrated into modernizing societies. To better understand the dynamics of these transitions, this article aims to characterize the cultural domain of food plants and analyze its relation with current day diets, and the local perceptions of changes given amongst the Ngäbe people of Southern Conte-Burica, Costa Rica, as production of food plants by its residents is hypothesized to be drastically in recession with an decreased local production in the area and new conservation and development paradigms being implemented. Methods Extensive freelisting, interviews and workshops were used to collect the data from 72 participants on their knowledge of food plants, their current dietary practices and their perceptions of change in local foodways, while cultural domain analysis, descriptive statistical analyses and development of fundamental explanatory themes were employed to analyze the data. Results Results show a food plants domain composed of 140 species, of which 85 % grow in the area, with a medium level of cultural consensus, and some age-based variation. Although many plants still grow in the area, in many key species a decrease on local production–even abandonment–was found, with much reduced cultivation areas. Yet, the domain appears to be largely theoretical, with little evidence of use; and the diet today is predominantly dependent on foods bought from the store (more than 50 % of basic ingredients), many of which were not salient or not even recognized as ‘food plants’ in freelists exercises. While changes in the importance of food plants were largely deemed a result of changes in cultural preferences for store bought processed food stuffs and changing values associated with farming and being food self-sufficient, Ngäbe were also aware of how changing household livelihood activities, and the subsequent loss of knowledge and use of food plants, were in fact being driven by changes in social and political policies, despite increases in forest cover and biodiversity. Conclusions Ngäbe foodways are changing in different and somewhat disconnected ways: knowledge of food plants is varied, reflecting most relevant changes in dietary practices such as lower cultivation areas and greater dependence on food from stores by all families. We attribute dietary shifts to socioeconomic and political changes in recent decades, in particular to a reduction of local production of food, new economic structures and agents related to the State and globalization

Borders Manifest: Racializing the Nicaraguan Refugee in Costa Rica

I look to border responses of North American countries as refugees and migrants move across them to argue that border responses racialize the foreign other in receiving countries. I pay particular attention to the South-South migration of Nicaraguans into Costa Rica, of importance now due to the increased displacement of Nicaraguans across this border as the Nicaraguan government continues its harsh crackdown on political dissenters in the country. Through critical whiteness studies, the tactics used to racialize Nicaraguans as an other in Costa Rica are interrogated. By connecting these methods of racialization and border responses, I examine how racial and geopolitical borders influence one another, coming to the conclusion that they actively support and construct each other

On the presence of the Ponto-Caspian hydrozoan Cordylophora caspia (Pallas, 1771) in an Iberian estuary: highlights on the introduction vectors and invasion routes

Several non-native invertebrate and vertebrate species have been detected in the Guadiana Estuary (SW-Iberian Peninsula, Europe) during the 21st century. In June 2015, the non-native hydroid Cordylophora caspia (Pallas, 1771) was detected for the first time in this estuary, which motivated an assessment of its distribution during late Spring and Summer 2016. The main goals of this paper were to: i) report the presence of Cordylophora caspia and its distribution in the Guadiana Estuary, ii) record the substrates colonized, salinity, and water temperatures at locations where the species was detected, iii) evaluate possible introduction vectors and invasion routes; and iv) discuss the potential impacts and management options. Cordylophora caspia occupied a 25-km stretch of the estuary with salinities between 0.2 and 13.8 and occupied a variety of human-made substrates. Shipping was the most likely introduction vector of C. caspia, which might have originated from populations in the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea. Currently, the potential ecological impacts are likely low since the population size is small due to an apparent shortage of suitable habitat. Economic effects are minimal at present because there are no major industries along the basin extracting water from the estuary. An integrated ecohydrological approach-i.e. freshets released from dams to control the populations of Cnidaria-was proposed to minimize or mitigate the potential negative effects of this species in the Guadiana Estuary.Delta Stewardship Council; Delta Science Program [1167]; Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) through the Jellyfisheries project [PTDC/MAR-BIO/0440/2014]; European Regional Development Fund (COMPETE program-Operational Competitiveness Programme); FCT [SFRH/BPD/108949/2015]; [UID/Multi/04326/2013]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

On formal aspects of the epistemic approach to paraconsistency

This paper reviews the central points and presents some recent developments of the epistemic approach to paraconsistency in terms of the preservation of evidence. Two formal systems are surveyed, the basic logic of evidence (BLE) and the logic of evidence and truth (LET J ), designed to deal, respectively, with evidence and with evidence and truth. While BLE is equivalent to Nelson’s logic N4, it has been conceived for a different purpose. Adequate valuation semantics that provide decidability are given for both BLE and LET J . The meanings of the connectives of BLE and LET J , from the point of view of preservation of evidence, is explained with the aid of an inferential semantics. A formalization of the notion of evidence for BLE as proposed by M. Fitting is also reviewed here. As a novel result, the paper shows that LET J is semantically characterized through the so-called Fidel structures. Some opportunities for further research are also discussed

A case of silent invasion : citizen science confirms the presence of Harmonia axyridis (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae) in Central America

Harmonia axyridis (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae) is a globally invasive ladybird. It has been intentionally introduced in many countries as a biological control agent, whereas it has been unintentionally released in many others. Climatic factors are important in limiting the spread of H. axyridis. For example, very few records are known from tropical or desert regions. Currently, no published reports are known from Central America. Here, we report H. axyridis from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Puerto Rico. Specimens were either observed by the authors, discovered in dried insect collections, or retrieved from searching through online photographs available from the citizen science project iNaturalist and the photo-sharing website Flickr. These new records and the wide distribution of H. axyridis in Latin America suggest several invasion events, which have gone unnoticed until now. We stress the need for further, large-scale monitoring and show the advantage of citizen science to assess the presence of invasive alien species