Identificación de las zonas de ladera aptas para el cultivo de piña md2 en el territorio del Valle del Cauca

En Colombia, es necesario que los productores adquieran conocimientos y desarrollen capacidades en temáticas concernientes a las cadenas de valor y, de este modo, bajo propuestas de carácter incluyente, accedan a los mercados. Así, a partir de esta base, se ha desarrollado el proyecto de regalías: “Incremento de la competitividad sostenible en la agricultura de ladera en todo el departamento, Valle del Cauca, Occidente”, el cual, mediante un enfoque participativo de aprendizaje en dichas temáticas, ha fomentado la circulación de conocimiento y el intercambio de información

Identificación de las zonas de ladera aptas para el cultivo de mora en el territorio del Valle del Cauca

En Colombia, es necesario que los productores adquieran conocimientos y desarrollen capacidades en temáticas concernientes a las cadenas de valor y, de este modo, bajo propuestas de carácter incluyente accedan a los mercados. Así, a partir de esta base, se ha desarrollado el proyecto de regalías: “Incremento de la competitividad sostenible en la agricultura de ladera en todo el departamento, Valle del Cauca, Occidente”, el cual, mediante un enfoque participativo de aprendizaje en dichas temáticas, ha fomentado la circulación de conocimiento y el intercambio de información

Identificación de las zonas de ladera aptas para el cultivo de aguacate Hass en el territorio del Valle del Cauca

En Colombia, es necesario que los productores adquieran conocimientos y desarrollen capacidades en temáticas concernientes a las cadenas de valor y, de este modo, bajo propuestas de carácter incluyente accedan a los mercados. Así, a partir de esta base, se ha desarrollado el proyecto de regalías: “Incremento de la competitividad sostenible en la agricultura de ladera en todo el departamento, Valle del Cauca, Occidente”, el cual, mediante un enfoque participativo de aprendizaje en dichas temáticas, ha fomentado la circulación de conocimiento y el intercambio de información

Using scientific evidence to link private and public sectors in the planning process: observations from coffee sector engagement in Nariño, Colombia.

Coffee farming is an important source of income for an estimated 40,000 farming families in the Department of Nariño in southwestern Colombia. Nariño is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading origins of fine coffee, as measured by both the subjective preferences of leading specialty coffee companies and the objective standards of Nariño’s Denomination of Origin. Despite the commercial success of Nariño’s coffee in the marketplace, household-level data collected by CRS and CIAT suggest that most of Nariño’s coffee farmers likely live in poverty, and recent investments of public resources to help growers create and capture additional value have not achieved their poverty reduction goals. This policy brief describes how a participatory multi-stakeholder planning process in Nariño’s coffee sector in 2012–2013, facilitated by credible third parties, succeeded in both introducing result-based evidence into the decision-making process and aligning the interests of the public and private sectors and civil society around a shared strategy to increase the sector’s competitiveness. That strategy formed the basis of significant public investment in the coffee sector that involves key actors from the public, private, and non-profit sectors. The process documented here is worthy of careful consideration by policymakers and private-sector firms interested in channeling scarce public resources toward market-responsive poverty reduction investments, development agencies seeking to contribute to lasting impact in the field, and research institutes seeking high-leverage applications of scientific evidence

A Telerehabilitation System for the Selection, Evaluation and Remote Management of Therapies

Telerehabilitation systems that support physical therapy sessions anywhere can help save healthcare costs while also improving the quality of life of the users that need rehabilitation. The main contribution of this paper is to present, as a whole, all the features supported by the innovative Kinect-based Telerehabilitation System (KiReS). In addition to the functionalities provided by current systems, it handles two new ones that could be incorporated into them, in order to give a step forward towards a new generation of telerehabilitation systems. The knowledge extraction functionality handles knowledge about the physical therapy record of patients and treatment protocols described in an ontology, named TRHONT, to select the adequate exercises for the rehabilitation of patients. The teleimmersion functionality provides a convenient, effective and user-friendly experience when performing the telerehabilitation, through a two-way real-time multimedia communication. The ontology contains about 2300 classes and 100 properties, and the system allows a reliable transmission of Kinect video depth, audio and skeleton data, being able to adapt to various network conditions. Moreover, the system has been tested with patients who suffered from shoulder disorders or total hip replacement.This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness grant number FEDER/TIN2016-78011-C4-2R

Virulence as a Side Effect of Interspecies Interaction in Vibrio Coral Pathogens

The increase in prevalence and severity of coral disease outbreaks produced by Vibrio pathogens, and related to global warming, has seriously impacted reef-building corals throughout the oceans. The coral Oculina patagonica has been used as a model system to study coral bleaching produced by Vibrio infection. Previous data demonstrated that when two coral pathogens (Vibrio coralliilyticus and Vibrio mediterranei) simultaneously infected the coral O. patagonica, their pathogenicity was greater than when each bacterium was infected separately. Here, to understand the mechanisms underlying this synergistic effect, transcriptomic analyses of monocultures and cocultures as well as experimental infection experiments were performed. Our results revealed that the interaction between the two vibrios under culture conditions overexpressed virulence factor genes (e.g., those encoding siderophores, the type VI secretion system, and toxins, among others). Moreover, under these conditions, vibrios were also more likely to form biofilms or become motile through induction of lateral flagella. All these changes that occur as a physiological response to the presence of a competing species could favor the colonization of the host when they are present in a mixed population. Additionally, during coral experimental infections, we showed that exposure of corals to molecules released during V. coralliilyticus and V. mediterranei coculture induced changes in the coral microbiome that favored damage to coral tissue and increased the production of lyso-platelet activating factor. Therefore, we propose that competition sensing, defined as the physiological response to detection of harm or to the presence of a competing Vibrio species, enhances the ability of Vibrio coral pathogens to invade their host and cause tissue necrosis.This research was supported in part by the EU-H2020 MetaFluidics project with grant agreement number 685474 (to J.A.) and NSF-PIRE grant number OISE1243541 (to F.R.). E.R.-P. was funded by the postdoctoral program Vali+d (GVA) (grant number APOSTD-2016-091). A.M.C.-R. and P.C.D. were supported by the National Sciences Foundation grant IOS-1656481

The complex organic molecular content in the L1517B starless core

Recent observations of the pre-stellar core L1544 and the younger starless core L1498 have revealed that complex organic molecules (COMs) are enhanced in the gas phase toward their outer and intermediate-density shells. Our goal is to determine the level of chemical complexity toward the starless core L1517B, which seems younger than L1498, and compare it with the other two previously studied cores to see if there is a chemical evolution within the cores. We have carried out 3 mm high-sensitivity observations toward two positions in the L1517B starless core: the core's centre and the position where the methanol emission peaks (at a distance of $\sim$5000 au from the core's centre). Our observations reveal that a lower number of COMs and COM precursors are detected in L1517B with respect to L1498 and L1544, and also show lower abundances. Besides methanol, we only detected CH$_3$O, H$_2$CCO, CH$_3$CHO, CH$_3$CN, CH$_3$NC, HCCCN, and HCCNC. Their measured abundances are $\sim$3 times larger toward the methanol peak than toward the core's centre, mimicking the behaviour found toward the more evolved cores L1544 and L1498. We propose that the differences in the chemical complexity observed between the three studied starless cores are a consequence of their evolution, with L1517B being the less evolved one, followed by L1498 and L1544. Chemical complexity in these cores seems to increase over time, with N-bearing molecules forming first and O-bearing COMs forming at a later stage as a result of the catastrophic depletion of CO.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figure

Assessing climate change impact on Guyana's crops using integrated crop and spatial modeling approaches.

The Crop and Spatial Modeling activity was part of the project ‘Development of an Evidence-Based, Gender Equitable Framework for Climate Smart Agriculture Interventions,’ carried out under the Ministry of Agriculture and in collaboration with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the Hydrometeorological Service of Guyana, and the University of Guyana. The project required geospatial vulnerability assessment and crop modeling research and extends previous climate change studies and vulnerability and capacity assessments regarding Guyana’s agricultural sector. The research was completed on the comparative use of geospatial methods and crop modeling tools for modeling crop suitability and yield in Guyana. This report shows thematic map outputs that indicate agro-climatic zones of high to low growth potential using current climate and edaphic datasets. Crop modeling required research of the growing conditions of target crops, after which calibrations were applied to estimate yields under future climate scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5