AgroFIMS v.1.0 - User manual

The Agronomy Field Information Management System (AgroFIMS) has been developed on CGIAR’s HIDAP (Highly Interactive Data Analysis Platform) created by CGIAR’s International Potato Center, CIP. AgroFIMS draws fully on ontologies, particularly the Agronomy Ontology (AgrO)1. It consists of modules that represent the typical cycle of operations in agronomic trial management (seeding, weeding, fertilization, harvest, and more) and enables the creation of data collection sheets using the same ontology-based set of variables, terminology, units and protocols. AgroFIMS therefore enables a priori harmonization with metadata and data interoperability standards and adherence to the FAIR Data Principles essential for data reuse and increasingly, for compliance with funder mandates - without any extra work for researchers. AgroFIMS is therefore of value to anyone (scientist, researcher, agronomist, etc.) who wishes to easily design a standards-compliant agronomic research fieldbook following the FAIR Data Principles. AgroFIMS also allows users to collect data electronically in the field, thereby reducing errors. Currently this is restricted to the KDSmart Android platform, but we expect to enable this capability with other platforms such as the Open Data Kit (ODK) and Field Book in v.2.0. Once data is collected using KDSmart, the data can be uploaded back to AgroFIMS for data validation, statistical analysis, and the generation of statistical analysis reports. V.2.0 will allow easy upload of the data from AgroFIMS to an institutional or compliant repository of the user’s choice

Secured Transactions History: The Impact of Southern Staple Agriculture on the First Chattel Mortgage Acts in the Anglo-American World

The development of secured transaction law in colonial America was spurred by a litigious conflict between the recognizance and the chattel mortgage. The recognizance was the admission and recording of a debt before the court in order to secure credit. However, court hearings were infrequent in the colonies and often logistically impractical to the average farmer or merchant. The chattel mortgage was a more informal and practical solution to providing lines of credit on personal property. Without a system for recording chattel mortgages, lenders could not be sure in their investments. In the southern colonies, the emergence of staple crops, the infrequent use of recognizances, and the planter-merchant’s influence and control of local governments led to the adoption of chattel mortgage acts. If a southern colony developed a staple agricultural product, such as rice, tobacco, or tar and pitch, then merchants were willing to extend lines of credit on indentured servants and various goods in exchange for an interest in an equivalent value of the staple product by years end. The use of a recognizance by some lenders, only after they realized their borrowers were on the verge of default, created the opportunity for subsequent lender to take a chattel mortgage on the borrower’s personalty before the original lender recorded the recognizance. Because English common law recognized a first in time right for mortgages, courts held that the earlier recorded chattel mortgage would be recognized after litigation. In an effort to streamline the process and protect the interests of the lenders who also served as sheriffs and legislators, many southern colonies passed the chattel mortgage acts requiring filing of the mortgage within a designated period of time, which voided all unrecorded interests

Secured Transactions History: The First Chattel Mortgage Acts in the Anglo-American World

The chattel mortgage acts first arose in the southern mainland English-American colony of Virginia in 1643. Other colonies followed suit over the next 100 years. The function of the earliest chattel mortgage acts was not to legalize the transaction, but to declare it void if not registered, or to provide a priority rule favoring the registered transaction. Legislatures did not pass these colonial chattel mortgage acts to legalize an otherwise fraudulent transaction because reported cases indicate that the common law upheld the nonpossessory secured transaction prior to the passage of the earliest act in the southern states. The Northeastern States’ Industrial Revolution had nothing to do with spawning these chattel mortgage acts. The southern economy of plantation agriculture led to the creation of the acts because planters seeking riches through expansion granted nonpossessory interests in their plantations, its labor contracts, and its agricultural products to obtain borrowings. The nonpossessory secured transactions interfered with other transactions, primarily the judgment lien on the debtor’s property and sales of the debtor’s property. The nonpossessory secured transaction would defeat a subsequent judgment lien under the derivation principle as a sale. The chattel mortgage registration act would now alert the sheriff and the judgment lienor

Secured Transaction History: The Impact of English Smuggling on the Chattel Mortgage Acts in the Spanish Borderlands

Spanish colonies, including the territories of Florida, Louisiana, and southwestern America, acknowledged the jurisdiction of Spanish royal decrees. The colonies approached the registration of mortgages in a similar but more tentative fashion, recognizing the distances between the borderlands and the registrar’s offices. The law developed differently in Florida and Louisiana, which were administered by a different governmental body. While the registration process was required for chattel mortgages on slaves, there is no evidence the rules were enforced or applied to other types of mortgages on personalty. However, in 1770, Louisiana adopted a filing requirement for chattel mortgages for all slaves and ships in order to protect against fraud and cheaper English black market goods. Although France assumed power in Louisiana, the territory followed Spanish law rather than French law by judicial decision. Mexico’s cessation from Spain had little effect on the orchestration of government, but Spain’s former southwestern territories continued to follow Spanish law. Mexico recognized chattel mortgages, but made no effort to enforce filing requirements in the Spanish borderlands. Several historical theories propose the origin of the spanish chattel mortgage acts. A royal tax was placed on the sale of most goods. These sales were to be recorded by a notary and any sale not recorded was invalid, thereby encouraging the recording of sales of personal property. However, O’Reilly, charged with imposing the Spanish mercantile system on the French inhabitants of Louisiana, introduced a recording statute preceding Spain’s land registration or ship registration. Another theory suggests that O’Reilly’s Spanish chattel mortgage act was the response to an isolated economic issue in Louisiana. Because Louisiana was not self-sufficient, trade dominated by the Spanish mercantile system failed to encourage economic independence. The act created assurances of property interests and thereby allowed creditors to be secure in their transactions when offering lines of credit. The adoption of the Spanish chattel mortgages in various forms in the Spanish borderland territories precedes the common belief that chattel mortgages developed in the Northeast in the 1820s

Visualization of interactions between chemoautotrophic symbionts and gill epithelial cells of Thyasira cf. gouldi using confocal microscopy and transmission electron microscopy

Many species of marine clams from the family Thyasiridae form symbioses with sulfur oxidizing bacteria, which are maintained externally on gill epithelial cells. Transmission electron microscope images suggest that host cells phagocytose and lyse symbionts to obtain nutrients. However, as this technique can only reveal two-dimensional sections of cells, interactions between host and symbionts, particularly with regards to phagocytosis and lysis, remain incompletely characterized. Here, fluorescent labelling and confocal microscopy of Thyasira cf. gouldi gills are used to visualize host nuclei, actin, acidic organelles, and symbiotic bacteria. I found that DAPI stained host nuclei but not symbionts. Actin labelling using phalloidin labeled microvilli but did not show obvious phagocytotic structures. The combined use of LysoTracker and CTC to label acidic organelles and symbionts, respectively, proved problematic due to colocalization, but labelling suggested low numbers of acidic organelles (lysosomes) and active symbionts. Results obtained, along with a review of transmission electron microscope images of T. cf. gouldi gill cells, suggest that nutrient transfer pathways may involve more morphologically complex structures and potentially different processes than previously thought. In future work, single gill cells should be reconstructed using FIB-SEM to visualize host cellular structures and symbiont cells in three dimensions

Plan de mercadeo para el polo turístico Caño Negro– Río Celeste, Región Huetar Norte – Costa Rica

Proyecto de Graduación (Maestría en Administración de Empresas) Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. Escuela Administración de Empresas, 2003.PLAN DE MERCADEO PARA EL POLO TURÍSTICO CAÑO NEGRO – RÍO CELESTE, REGIÓN HUETAR NORTE – COSTA RICA El presente proyecto de investigación tiene como principal objetivo elaborar un Plan de Mercadeo para el Polo Turístico Caño Negro – Río Celeste, en la Región Huetar Norte de Costa Rica. La información necesaria para lograr dicho objetivo fue brindada por representantes de empresas turísticas, de la Zona Económica Especial de la Región Huetar Norte, de las municipalidades de Guatuso, Upala y Los Chiles, del Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, Sede San Carlos, de Eco Tec, del Ministerio de Ambiente y Energía, y del Instituto Costarricense de Turismo, mediante entrevistas no estructuradas. Con dicha información y con la recolectada mediante fuentes bibliográficas, fue posible determinar que el Polo Turístico Caño Negro – Río Celeste cuenta con todas las condiciones necesarias para el desarrollo del turismo científico, por lo que el plan de mercadeo se puede dirigir a un nicho muy especializado, el de los grupos académicos universitarios y preuniversitarios de turismo científico, de aventura y de naturalismo suave en la costa este de los Estados Unidos y Canadá, que les guste el turismo basado en la naturaleza. La objetivo de mercadeo principal que persigue el presente plan, es aumentar la cantidad de visitantes y el nivel de consumo de los mismos en el Polo Turístico Caño Negro – Río Celeste, con el fin de hacer del turismo una actividad significativa que ayude a elevar el nivel de vida de sus habitantes, el cual se encuentra entre los más bajos del país. viii x En vista de que actualmente dentro del Polo turístico no hay un ente que pueda llevar a cabo el presente plan de mercadeo, Eco Tec, un proyecto de extensión de la Escuela de Ciencias y Letras y de la Dirección de Sede del Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica Sede San Carlos, adscrito a la Vicerrectoría de Investigación y Extensión, que se dedica a la promoción y práctica del turismo científico, asumirá la tarea de impulsar el turismo del Polo Turístico apoyado en la presente propuesta de plan de mercadeo. Eventualmente, al tiempo que se superen las carencias organizacionales de la sociedad civil del Polo Turístico, crecerá la capacidad local de atención a los visitantes y con esto las oportunidades de hacer del turismo la actividad que efectivamente contribuya a levantar y mantener una calidad de vida aceptable para los habitantes de dicho Polo. La inversión inicial necesaria para llevar a cabo el plan de mercadeo es de 1,836 dólares, suma que no toma en cuenta muchos costos que ya cubre el proyecto Eco Tec como consecuencia de sus funciones y que no se van a ver afectados con la realización del plan

Secured Transactions History: The Impact of English Smuggling on the Chattel Mortgage Acts inthe Spanish Borderlands

This Article begins to correct the view that chattel mortgage acts began in the northeastern United States. First, this Article investigates whether Spanish law recognized chattel mortgages against third persons. Finding that Spanish law did, this Article then examines whether Spanish officials developed any filing requirements for them. Concluding that these officials did not, this Article next delineates the application of this law in the various Spanish-Borderland provinces. Several of these provinces, at various times, did have filing requirements for some types of chattel mortgages, contrary to the Spanish law otherwise applicable. Next, this Article investigates the survival or replacement of these chattel mortgage acts under the Anglo-American regime. Finally, this Article provides the source for the colonial Spanish chattel mortgage acts-namely, the effort to eradicate English smuggling in a newly acquired province and thereby render the province a viable component in the Spanish mercantile system

Mixed proton and electron conducting double perovskite anodes for stable and efficient tubular proton ceramic electrolysers.

[EN] Hydrogen production from water electrolysis is a key enabling energy storage technology for the large-scale deployment of intermittent renewable energy sources. Proton ceramic electrolysers (PCEs) can produce dry pressurized hydrogen directly from steam, avoiding major parts of cost-driving downstream separation and compression. However, the development of PCEs has suffered from limited electrical efficiency due to electronic leakage and poor electrode kinetics. Here, we present the first fully operational BaZrO3-based tubular PCE, with 10 cm(2) active area and a hydrogen production rate above 15 Nml min(-1). The novel steam anode Ba1-xGd0.8La0.2+xCo2O6-delta exhibits mixed p-type electronic and protonic conduction and low activation energy for water splitting, enabling total polarization resistances below 1 Omega cm(2) at 600 degrees C and Faradaic efficiencies close to 100% at high steam pressures. These tubular PCEs are mechanically robust, tolerate high pressures, allow improved process integration and offer scale-up modularity.The work leading to these results has received funding from the Research Council of Norway (grant 236828) and from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) for the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative under grant agreement 621244 ('ELECTRA') and Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement 779486 ('GAMER'). This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Hydrogen Europe and Hydrogen Europe research.Vøllestad, E.; Strandbakke, R.; Tarach, M.; Catalán-Martínez, D.; Fontaine, M.; Beeaff, D.; Clark, DR.... (2019). Mixed proton and electron conducting double perovskite anodes for stable and efficient tubular proton ceramic electrolysers. Nature Materials. 18(7):752-759. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0388-2S75275918

Plan de marketing de seguros de vida para microempresarios en Lima

El trabajo tiene por objetivo investigar el potencial que existe en el segmento de microempresarios en Lima para optar por seguros de vida. Crecer Seguros, compañía de seguros de vida ha incursionado en el mercado asegurador peruano, está aprovechando dicha oportunidad con apenas el 1,8% de penetración de primas versus el PBI, lo cual significa una gran oportunida