Caficultura y cambio climático en Nicaragua: Refexiones sobre el papel de las políticas públicas y las cooperativas

En el marco de un proyecto denominado “Planes de Inversión en Agricultura Sostenible Adaptada al Clima” implementado por CEDECO, HIVOS, Bioversity Internacional, el Centro Mundial de Agroforestería (ICRAF) y la Universidad de Vermont, Bioversity International llevó a cabo un estudio sobre el marco político e institucional que rodea la producción del café por pequeños productores en Nicaragua. Los objetivos del mismo fueron entender y documentar cómo las políticas públicas que regulan la caficultura en Nicaragua así como el modo de funcionar de las cooperativas agrícolas influyen en las prácticas agrícolas de los pequeños productores de café en Nicaragua, y en particular su capacidad para adoptar medidas que les permitan adaptar la producción cafetalera a los efectos del cambio climático

Review of the early Albian ammonites of the Montmell Formation near Marmellar (Salou-Garraf Basin, Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain)

In this work, we review the ammonites of the Montmell Formation in the Marmellar area housed in the collections of the Museo Geológico del Seminario de Barcelona and the Museu de Geologia de Barcelona. This taxonomic update allows the proper biostratigraphic analysis of the ammonite assemblage and assigns it to the early Albian, Leymeriella tardefurcata Zone. The taxonomic analysis of all the studied material allows us to recognize the presence of the following taxa: Uhligella sp., Parengonoceras bassei, Hypacanthoplites plesiotypicus, Hypacanthoplites milletianus, Hypacanthoplites subelegans, and Hypacanthoplites sp. The current work is a step forward in the chronostratigraphic knowledge of the Salou-Garraf Basin in the Catalan Coastal Ranges

Influence of social networks on the adoption of climate smart technologies in East Africa: Findings from two surveys and participatory exercises with farmers and local experts

As part of the Policy Action for Climate Change Adaptation (PACCA) project, this info note summarizes findings of a project activity entitled “Influencing and linking policies and institutions from national to local level for the development and adoption of climate‐resilient food systems in East Africa” undertaken by researchers from Bioversity International and Arizona State University. By conducting a network analysis and participatory exercises with district officials and farmers in Lushoto (Tanzania) and Rakai (Uganda), the study assesses the extent to which farmers are adopting agricultural practices and correlates the findings about the size and “make up” of the networks in which the farmers are embedded

Adoption of climate smart technologies in East Africa: Findings from two surveys and participatory exercises with farmers and local experts

As part of the “Policy Action for Climate Change Adaptation” (PACCA) project this info note summarizes findings of a project activity entitled “Influencing and linking policies and institutions from national to local level for the development and adoption of climate‐resilient food systems in East Africa” undertaken by researchers from Bioversity International and Arizona State University. By conducting a network analysis and participatory exercises with district officials and farmers, the study assesses the extent to which farmers are adopting agricultural practices and correlates the findings about the size and “make up” of the networks in which the farmers are embedded

Lower Cretaceous (Hauterivian-Albian) ammonite biostratigraphy in the Maestrat Basin (E Spain)

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Determination of Denitrification Genes Abundance in Environmental Samples

Abstract Diversity of microorganisms involved in the biogeochemical N cycle is of fundamental interest in microbial ecology. Denitrification is a key step in the cycle by which nitrate is reduced to dinitrogen gas via the soluble nitrite and the gaseous compounds nitric oxide and nitrous oxide. The process is carried out by the sequential activity of the nitrate, nitrite, nitric oxide, and nitrous oxide reductase enzyme, respectively. The fluorescence-based quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is widely used for quantification of nucleic acids in samples obtained from numerous, diverse sources. Here, we provide a well-proven methodology for isolation of DNA from environmental samples and describe relevant experimental conditions for utilization of qPCR to assay the 16S rRNA and nar/nap, nirK/nirS, c-nor/qnor, and nos denitrification genes that encode synthesis of denitrifying enzymes. The ISO 11063 standard method and MIQUE guidelines are considered with the aim to increase experimental transparency

Chronostratigraphy of the Barremian-Early Albian of the Maestrat Basin (E Iberian Peninsula): integrating strontium-isotope stratigraphy and ammonoid biostratigraphy

A revised chronostratigraphy of the Barremian - Early Albian sedimentary record of the Maestrat Basin (E Iberian Peninsula) is provided based on a comprehensive synthesis of previous biostratigrahic data, a new ammonoid finding and numerical ages derived from 87Sr/86Sr values measured on shells of rudists, oysters and brachiopods. The succession, which comprises eight lithostratigraphic formations, is arranged into six major transgressive-regressive sequences and plotted against numerical ages, geomagnetic polarity chrons, ammonoid zones and the stratigraphic distribution of age-diagnostic ammonoids, orbitolinid fora- minifera and rudist bivalves. The oldest lithostratigraphic unit sampled, the marine Artoles Formation, is Early to Late Barremian. Above, the dinosaur-bearing deposits of the Morella Formation and its coastal to shallow-marine equivalent, the Cervera del Maestrat Formation, are of Late Barremian age and span at least part of the Imerites giraudi ammonoid zone. 87Sr/ 86Sr ratios from oyster shells in the upper part of the overlying marine Xert Formation are consistent with a latest Barremian-earliest Aptian age, while an ammonite belonging to the Late Barremian Martelites sarasini Zone was collected within the lowermost part of this lat- ter formation. The Barremian-Aptian boundary is tentatively placed close above the base of the succeeding transgressive marls of the Forcall Formation by analogy with nearby Tethyan basins, where major transgres- sive records contain latest Barremian ammonoids in their basal parts. The rest of the Forcall Formation and the platform carbonates of the Villarroya de los Pinares Formation are of Early Aptian age. The transition from the Barremian into the Aptian occurred in the course of a wide transgression, which was accompanied by the proliferation of Palorbitolina lenticularis. This transgressive event drowned Late Barremian carbonate platforms (Xert Formation) throughout the basin. Extensive carbonate platforms (Villarroya de los Pinares Formation) recovered coevally with a post-OAE 1a late Early Aptian major regression of relative sea level. The last lithostratigraphic unit analyzed, the marine Benassal Formation, spans the terminal Early Aptian- Late Aptian interval. Based on ammonite distributions, the lower part of the overlying coastal to continental coal-bearing Escucha Formation is Early Albian in age. This improved chronostratigraphic knowledge allows a more precise correlation of the sedimentary record studied with other coeval successions worldwide

Caficultura y cambio climático en Nicaragua: Refexiones sobre el papel de las políticas públicas y las cooperativas

En Nicaragua el café ocupa el tercer lugar de la superficie cultivada (11%) y, después del maíz y del frijol, es el rubro agrícola que más contribuye al PIB (10%). El 96% de las fincas cafetaleras están en manos de pequeños productores (menos de 20 manzanas1), los cuales representan un 50% del área cultivada del café. Alrededor del 95% del café en Nicaragua se produce bajo sombra y utiliza diversas variedades como Caturra, Borbón, Maragogipe, Catimor, Típica y Cautilla. El café es una fuente muy importante de empleo en el sector rural. Se estima que esta actividad genera un 53% del empleo agrícola y el 14% del total de todo el país. Alrededor del 85% de la producción total de café se vende en el mercado externo y un 15% se consume localmente. Una gran parte de la exportación se realiza a través de intermediarios: solo un 46% de la producción exportable viene directamente del pequeño productor. Existen grandes inequidades dentro del sector del café en Nicaragua, donde grandes empresas concentran gran parte de los ingresos. Nicaragua cuenta con 44.000 productores que cultivan café como rubro principal como parte de un sistema integrado. Esto quiere decir que además de café, cultivan maíz, frijol, hortalizas y musáceas, cítricos, y raíces como la malanga. De ellos, unos 30.000 son pequeños productores que cultivan áreas de entre tan solo 0.5 y 5 manzanas y a los que les resulta muy difícil acceder al financiamiento, tecnologías y apoyo técnico necesarios para modernizar su producción. Los productores medianos y grandes, por otro lado, tienen acceso o al menos cuentan con los recursos suficientes para poder pagar los servicios que les facilitan mejorar su producción

A linguistic rule-based approach to extract drug-drug interactions from pharmacological documents

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A drug-drug interaction (DDI) occurs when one drug influences the level or activity of another drug. The increasing volume of the scientific literature overwhelms health care professionals trying to be kept up-to-date with all published studies on DDI.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This paper describes a hybrid linguistic approach to DDI extraction that combines shallow parsing and syntactic simplification with pattern matching. Appositions and coordinate structures are interpreted based on shallow syntactic parsing provided by the UMLS MetaMap tool (MMTx). Subsequently, complex and compound sentences are broken down into clauses from which simple sentences are generated by a set of simplification rules. A pharmacist defined a set of domain-specific lexical patterns to capture the most common expressions of DDI in texts. These lexical patterns are matched with the generated sentences in order to extract DDIs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have performed different experiments to analyze the performance of the different processes. The lexical patterns achieve a reasonable precision (67.30%), but very low recall (14.07%). The inclusion of appositions and coordinate structures helps to improve the recall (25.70%), however, precision is lower (48.69%). The detection of clauses does not improve the performance.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Information Extraction (IE) techniques can provide an interesting way of reducing the time spent by health care professionals on reviewing the literature. Nevertheless, no approach has been carried out to extract DDI from texts. To the best of our knowledge, this work proposes the first integral solution for the automatic extraction of DDI from biomedical texts.</p

The Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone: creating a workshop for teaching public health and medical response.

Background Greater than 11,000 people died during the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak, which had a severe impact on health systems and social/economic consequences. Outbreaks and other biological incidents have highlighted the relevance of teaching public health and medical response to future health professionals. Health science professionals can provide invaluable help as first responders to protect humans in the aftermath of an outbreak. Thus, academics at De Montfort University (UK) in conjunction with biomedical scientists that have responded to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone have developed specialised training to train UK students. Methods Specialised training of 3 hours has been developed and initially tested with final year BMedSci Medical Science students enrolled in the Clinical Perspectives II module (n=24) for the 2016/17 course. The training consists of the development of a response to protect the public and minimise the spread of infection in the aftermath of a Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever outbreak (2 hour session). Students received comprehensive information about biological hazards and emergency planning (1 hour session) and a short description about this disease. Students, by peer-group interaction, designed an intervention programme following the steps of evidence-based public health and articles and other resources to inform their decisions. Information about the materials used in this training is described elsewhere (Peña-Fernández and Choi, 2016; Peña-Fernández et al., 2017). Results Analysis of the validated feedback questionnaire has provided the following results: 67% of the students reported high levels of satisfaction with the training provided and only 8% of students highlighted poor satisfaction that could be attributed to the length of the training (3 continuous hours; 31% of the students reported that the training had a long duration). The survey showed that 83% of the students agreed with the statement that the exercise helped them gain appropriate knowledge of public health prevention and preparedness (no students disagreed); and 91% highlighted that they learnt how to investigate an outbreak. Finally, 92% of students reported that the materials provided were enough to design their intervention plan. Conclusions Although these results are preliminary, the novel teaching materials produced could be effective for providing students with some medical response knowledge and skills to design interventions to protect the public in future outbreaks