El proceso de transferencia de tecnología

Este ensayo es una relfexión acerca de una noción y de una actividad tradicional dentro de las responsabilidades del ICA. Su autor, desde hace tiempo vinculado al mencionado instituto, ofrece una mirada crítica acerca de lo que varios estudiosos del proceso de transferencia de tecnología han venido planteando al respecto

Estructuración de fincas modales con sistemas de producción agroforestal y silvopastoril, en núcleos forestales vinculados a la cadena forestal :capacitación y transferencia de tecnología en sistemas agroforestales a productores del departamento de Córdoba en el marco de los acuerdos regionales de competitividad forestal informe final.

En el marco del Plan Nacional de Desarrollo, de la política sectorial del Ministerio de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural y del Plan Nacional de Desarrollo forestal - PNDF, se define la necesidad de fortalecer el establecimiento de cultivos forestales en aquellas regiones con convenios sectoriales de competitividad forestal, definiéndose como una de las estrategias para lograrlo, el fomento y desarrollo de los sistemas agroforestales orientados al cultivo y el manejo del componente forestal.Forestales-Foresterí

An exploration of the potential benefits of integrated pest management systems and the use of insect resistant potatoes to control the Guatemalan Tuber Moth (Tecia solanivora Povolny) in Ventaquemada, Colombia:

"CORPOICA and IFPRI implemented a research project in Ventaquemada, Colombia. The project's goal was to asses the benefits of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices and the potential of Genetically Modified insect resistant (Bt) potatoes to manage damage caused by the Guatemalan Tuber Moth (Tecia solanivora Povolny). The Guatemalan Tuber Moth is particularly destructive because field spraying on the adult stage is ineffective and there exists damage specificity to the tubers. Excessive pesticide sprays have resulted in resistance to several insecticides. Insect resistant (Bt) potatoes has been shown an effective means to control other members of the Tuber Moth complex. Thus a Bt potato may play a role in managing Tecia in Colombia. This is an ex ante study as there are no Bt potatoes currently under field conditions in Colombia.. To examine this issue, we conducted a survey in 2003 of 78 farmers in the region to estimate a baseline of traditionally and IPM managed systems. The first year survey was supplemented with focus groups to examine damage and production costs in 2003 and 2004. We also implemented activities such as field verification of IPM practices and damage, a Farmer Field School and other participatory methods. Our analysis uses methods such partial budgeting analysis, a production function input abatement expectations model, and an economic surplus model augmented by stochastic simulations. Results of the analysis presented here outlines estimated losses under field and storage conditions, likely range of benefits accrued by farmers in the region due to the potential adoption of a portfolio of IPM management practices and Bt potatoes. Results from the survey conducted in 2003 show that producers in the area have endured significant field and storage losses within the previous 10 years, but were low in that particular year. Initial results where confirmed by results of focus groups in 2003 and 2004 which show very low field and storage damage. Sustained precipitation explains the observed low levels of damage by the Tuber Moth. Low levels of damage induced zero (or even negative) cost differences between conventional and IPM management. In contrast, using the proposed expectation model to estimate expected payoffs to IPM investments show that even with low levels of damage it still pays for producers to invest in IPM practices. The economic surplus estimates show that even considering variability of field and storage losses, as well as of other critical parameters, the use of Bt potatoes in Colombia creates a positive return to investment to Bt potato research, assuming that damage is present under field conditions. We finalize by discussing some of the institutional and strategic considerations for the potential use of Bt potatoes in the country." Authors' abstractPotatoes Economic aspects, Genetically modified crops, Economic surplus model, Risk, Research and development, Bt-potatoes,

Variedades de papa: participación del agricultor en el proceso de selección

La agricultura moderna está organizada, administrada y manejada con base en el paradigma tradicional de investigación en el cual con evidencias y observaciones empíricas se formulan hipótesis y se someten a prueba en concordancia con las reglas del método científico

Contralateral asymmetry for breast cancer detection : A CADx approach

Early detection is fundamental for the effective treatment of breast cancer and the screening mammography is the most common tool used by the medical community to detect early breast cancer development. Screening mammograms include images of both breasts using two standard views, and the contralateral asymmetry per view is a key feature in detecting breast cancer. we propose a methodology to incorporate said asymmetry information into a computer-aided diagnosis system that can accurately discern between healthy subjects and subjects at risk of having breast cancer. Furthermore, we generate features that measure not only a view-wise asymmetry, but a subject-wise one. Briefly, the methodology co-registers the left and right mammograms, extracts image characteristics, fuses them into subjectwise features, and classifies subjects. In this study, 152 subjects from two independent databases, one with analog- and one with digital mammograms, were used to validate the methodology. Areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.738 and 0.767, and diagnostic odds ratios of 23.10 and 9.00 were achieved, respectively. In addition, the proposed method has the potential to rank subjects by their probability of having breas

Incorporating Breast Asymmetry Studies into CADx Systems

Breast cancer is one of the global leading causes of death among women, and an early detection is of uttermost importance to reduce mortality rates. Screening mammograms, in which radiologists rely only on their eyesight, are one of the most used early detection methods. However, characteristics, such as the asymmetry between breasts, a feature that could be very difficult to visually quantize, is key to breast cancer detection. Due to the highly heterogeneous and deformable structure of the breast itself, incorporating asymmetry measurements into an automated detection system is still a challenge. In this study, we proposed the use of a bilateral registration algorithm as an effective way to automatically measure mirror asymmetry. Furthermore, this information was fed to a machine learning algorithm to improve the accuracy of the model. In this study, 449 subjects (197 with calcifications, 207 with masses, and 45 healthy subjects) from a public database were used to train and evaluate the proposed methodology. Using this procedure, we were able to independently identify subjects with calcifications (accuracy = 0.825, AUC = 0.882) and masses (accuracy = 0.698, AUC = 0.807) from healthy subjects