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I A Cooperative Disagreement i offers "a comprehensive, chronological, archive-intensive exploration of the understudied Canada-US side" of the triangular relations between Canada, the US, and Cuba between 1959 and 1993. The author is a Canadian historian and, most importantly, a professional archivist who labored for years in both Canadian and US archives with one objective: to illuminate how Canada and the US successfully managed their "disagreement" on how to handle communist Cuba. [Extracted from the article]

This essay reflects upon what happens to the aspirational aesthetic/ethical quality of the fino —with its multiple connotations, ranging from refinement, smoothness, fairness (in color), purity, correctness, education, spiritual goodness, nobility, generosity, glamour, criollo- ness, modesty and demureness, to homosexuality, sexual repression, prudishness, pickiness, favoring of foreign ways, and snobbism—during the Cuban revolution by examining select cultural productions from 1966 to the present. Taking Pedro Manuel González Reinoso's "Roxy the Red," a Sovietized Cuban drag libretto, as a point of departure for its characterization of a popular Cuban perception of a "lack" within Soviet aesthetics, this essay then outlines a possible route of the fino through the pre-revolutionary universe of José Lezama Lima's Paradiso (1966); a "transition" evidenced in Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Tres Tristes Tigres (1967) and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's feature Memorias de subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968); into the Soviet Cuban artistic landscape of Enrique Colina's documentaries, primarily Estética (1984), Chapucerías (1987); and even in the twenty-first century within Arturo Infante's short Utopía (2004), Colina's Los "bolos" en Cuba y una eterna amistad (The Russians in Cuba and an Eternal Friendship, 2011), José Manuel Prieto's Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia (2012), and Gertrudis Rivalta's artistic mock-ups that she began to construct in 2011. Suggesting ways that the very revolution did not abandon this category, but rather adopted it to its end, this essay shows, moreover, how the quest for a certain kind of "harmony" between internal and external composure can be, at times, liberating and, other times, repressive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Gaucher disease (GD) is a lysosomal storage disorder characterized by a deficiency of the lysosomal acid β-D-glucosidase (GBA). The aim of this study was to develop an ultramicro-fluorometric assay based on the method of Chamoles et al. for determining GBA activity in dried blood spots on filter paper (DBS)., Methods: The assay used 3-mm diameter blood spot and 8 mmol/l of 4-methylumbelliferyl-β-D-glucoside as enzymatic substrate. The reaction occurred in plates incubated at 37°C for 20 hours and the enzyme activity was expressed in μmol hydrolysed substrate/l blood/h. The fluorescence of the enzyme product was automatically measured in a fluorometer-photometer reader (SUMA Technology)., Results: The intra and inter-assay coefficients of variation were lower than 9 and 12%, respectively, and the recovery range was 97-109%.Three patients with GD were correctly diagnosed using the ultramicroassay. Healthy newborn DBS samples (n = 3003) from the National Neonatal Screening Program were analyzed, and the mean GBA activity was 5.7 μmol/l blood/h. Our assay showed high Pearson (n = 26; r = 0.99) and concordance correlations (ρc = 0.99) with the traditional method described by Chamoles et al., Conclusions: The analytical performance characteristics of our ultramicro-fluorometric assay suggest that it can be used in the diagnosis of GD in newborns and adults.

The article discusses the La Habana 2016 workshop on writing scientific papers that was held in Cuba on March 9, 2016.

What a reporter is and does, and does not do, and the integrity of that idea, has always been an unsettled question, interrogated on the blurred, unregulated borders between journalism and the state. In embattled liminal spaces, reporters--negotiating a nebulous terrain of high-stakes reporting that tested and revised their emerging, unstable journalistic norms--fought in war, collaborated with US intelligence, and engaged in secret diplomacy. This article, focusing on the careers of two reporters, Sylvester Scovel in Cuba and William Bayard Hale in Mexico, explains how and why reporters came to work for the state, a neglected tradition conceptualized here as "state work," from the 1890s to 1920s. That history is an argument for scholars of journalism and political history to study what reporters did, not just what they published, to better understand the role of journalism in US democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general mitigating and aggravating circumstances of criminal liability are elements attached to the crime that, when they occur, affect the punishment quantum. Cuban criminal legislation provides a catalog of such circumstances and some general conditions for their application. Such norms give judges broad discretion in assessing circumstances and adjusting punishment based on the intensity of those circumstances. In the interest of broad judicial discretion, the law does not establish specific ways for measuring circumstances' intensity. This gives judges more freedom and autonomy, but it also imposes on them more social responsibility and challenges them to manage the uncertainty and subjectivity inherent in this complex activity. This paper proposes a model to aid the linguistic assessment of circumstances' intensity and to provide linguistic and numerical recommendations to determine an appropriate punishment interval. M-LAMAC determines the collective evaluation of circumstances of the same type, determines the prevalence of a type of circumstance by means of a compensation function, recommends the required modification in the input interval, and finally recommends a numerical interval adjusted to the judges' initially expressed preferences. The model's applicability is demonstrated by means of several experiments on a fictitious case of bank document forgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On Sunday, October 14, 1962, an American U-2 aircraft, flying a photographic reconnaissance mission over Cuba, took 928 images (one is included with this article). The next day, analysts at the National Photographic Interpretation Center concluded that the photographs showed evidence of Soviet missile site construction in Cuba and conveyed their findings to McGeorge Bundy, President John F. Kennedy's National Security Adviser. Using this featured photograph and the copy of Pres. Kennedy's speech, teachers can lead a class discussion with the following questions: (1) What kind of document is it?; (2) When was it created?; (3) By whom?; and (4) For what purpose? This activity can help students recognized how helpful a group of advisors could be.

In 1900, news of U.S. postal officials committing fraud in Cuba became a scandal that influenced the political, legal, and governmental trajectory of U.S. imperialism. Anti-imperialist Democrats used the frauds to undermine Republican pro-imperialists on the eve of the 1900 election. Prominent Republicans hoped to contain the scandal through swift punishment, but when the accused refused extradition, the resulting Supreme Court case, though rarely discussed, became the first of the Insular Cases. In 1900, it was not yet clear whether the U.S. empire would be run by self-interested actors or self-proclaimed progressive reformers. The commitment to progressive imperialism observed later in other colonies was, at least in part, worked out in this postal frauds case, as individuals chose how to respond to the scandal. Their actions were guided as much by scandal and the pursuit of self-interest as they were by lofty ideals about good government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to build a theoretical approach to the master lines of constructing the new Cuban tax law. This special tax regime allows the tax governance of several actors of the national economy directed to develop technologies, change of productive matrix and growth of Cuban science products' introduction in the Cuban enterprises net. We used the analysis-synthesis; induction-deduction; sociological; exegetic, and modulation theory as methods. The main results obtained provide the master lines for constructing a novel political approach towards future tax regime. The authors offer systematization of the Cuban economic scenarios and provide novel and practically instrumental suggestions for transforming the current tax regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of the indoor air can provide very useful information for the artwork conservation. The aim of the study was to evaluate the microbial concentration inside six document repositories of the National Archive of the Republic of Cuba in two months of 1 year. The repositories are large, high, and have a natural cross-ventilation system. The microbial sampling was done in July 2010 (summer or rainy month) and February 2011 (winter or dry month) using the SAS Super 100 biocollector at 100 L/min. An appropriate selective culture media were used to isolate fungi and bacteria. A high total microbial concentration on the north side of the building in two studied months was observed. The fungal concentrations were significantly higher in July 2010 in all repositories, while the bacterial concentrations were significantly higher mostly in February 2011 only in repositories located on the first and second floor of the building. Eight fungal genera in the indoor air of all environments were isolated. Regardless of the side of the analyzed building, Penicillium, Aspergillus, and Cladosporium were the predominant genera. Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus niger were the species isolated in almost all of the analyzed repositories in the studied months. Gram-positive bacteria prevailed among bacterial groups isolated from indoor air repositories, and some percentages corresponded to the genera Bacillus and Streptomyces. In Cuba, the temperature and relative humidity are high during the whole year but the natural ventilation plays an important role in retarding microbial growth on materials.

Cuba is struggling with a growing environmental problem: the uncontrolled spread of the allochthonous weed species marabou (Dichrostachys cinerea) throughout the country. Over the last 70 years, marabou has become a formidable invasive species that poses a threat to Cuban biodiversity and agricultural productivity. In this paper, we present a free and affordable method for regularly mapping the spatial distribution of the marabou based on the Google Earth Engine platform and ecological surveys. To test its accuracy, we develop an 18-year remote sensing analysis (2000–2018) of marabou dynamics using the Valle de los Ingenios, a Cuban UNESCO World Heritage Site, as an experimental model. Our spatial analysis reveals clear patterns of marabou distribution and highlights areas of concentrated growth. Temporal trends illustrate the aggressive nature of the species, identifying periods of expansion and decline. In addition, our system is able to detect specific, large-scale human interventions against the marabou plague in the area. The results highlight the urgent need for remedial strategies to maintain the fragile ecological balance in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China, Yingjin Zhang proposes polylocality as a theoretical framework to perceive Chinese cinema within a cross border and worldly network. Through polylocality, Zhang argues that cinema designates the relationality among differentiated positions across places, which challenges the concept of transnational cinema that predominantly underscores the spatial relationship between cinema and the world. The act of mobilization, migration, and nomadicity in the process of filmmaking also innovates (un-)wanted mutuality, intimacy, and reciprocity, with or without plan. In this paper, I argue that the framework of polylocality bears the potentiality to open the process of documentary filmmaking as a solitary practice, both on and off screen, through a close reading of Havana Divas, a documentary featuring two Cantonese opera divas living in Cuba. I contend that the field of transpacific studies, breaking through from the national imagination in the concept of (trans-)national cinema, reinforces Zhang's theory of polylocality and sheds light on the film practice that involves the mutual mobilization of both the filmmaker and the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Antipode is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A bibliography on the topic of the Caribbean area is presented which includes the books "Fewer Men, More Babies: Sex, Family, and Fertility in Haiti," by Timothy T. Schwartz, "Emancipados: Slave Societies in Brazil and Cuba," by Babatunde Sofela, and "New Perspectives on Slavery and Colonialism in the Caribbean," edited by Marten Schalkwijk and Stephen Smafl.

A National Innovation System (NIS) supposes updated, continuous, and collaborative work between different agents, so the value chain approach fits perfectly with this NIS conception. The sector selected to illustrate our proposal is the biotechnological industry because of its structure in technology-based companies and its contributions to de Cuban GDP. This is the first research that works in a proposition of NIS for Cuba. The objective of this paper is to suggest a NIS for Cuba based on the value chain of its biotechnological industry. We follow a benchmarking methodology. First, we analyze nine international NIS experiences from developed and developing countries. Then, we highlight several items to be applied to the Cuban proposed NIS by analyzing five indicators: regulations, technology and innovation policies, financial systems, business activities, and research and education systems. The proposed NIS shows links between funding, production, service, and scientific sectors based on the biotechnological industry. It is considered beneficial for the three most important actors in a nation (companies, government, and society) because it allows a profitable and durable solution for economic and social troubles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acceleration of the impact of climate change prompts the cement industry for swift and effective solutions to reduce a large part of the carbon dioxide associated with cement manufacture. The use of Supplementary Cementitious Materials, SCM, such as fly ash and slag have enabled so far, the possibility of partially replacing clinker, the most energy intensive and main responsible component in cement for carbon emissions. However, reserves of both SCM are declining and their price is increasing, and replacing more than 30% clinker with these SCM can compromise early strength. In recent years a global team of scientists from Switzerland, Cuba and India have proven the possibility of dropping clinker content in cement down to 50% or even less through the combined use of calcined kaolinitic clays and limestone, both cheap and abundant materials, to produce a new cement called "LC3". The resulting cement matches the properties of a CEM I (EN‐197) at all ages, and carbon emission reduction is reportedly around 25‐40%, depending on the cement to compare with. This paper presents the accumulated experience in the investigation of the new cementitious system and the introduction at the industrial level. Issues like the choice of the right clay, calcination technology, product formulation, standardization and economic feasibility will be discussed. The information in this paper is intended to encourage industrial partners to invest in the new technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The persistence of the peasantry challenges conceptualizations of smallholders on both the left and the right. It also highlights the vital role that smallholders play in socio-ecosystems. This paper uses the Cuban agroecological transition to re-think the role that smallholders play in development discourse and practice. By analyzing the public policies that Cuba enacted after the Special Period, this article derives several public policy lessons – including securing land tenure, localizing food production and regulating market development – to inform smallholder-driven transition elsewhere. These lessons provide important points of departure for efforts to improve the social, economic and ecological dynamics of smallholder agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reveals the theoretical framework and practical experience of Ernesto Guevara, investigating how he got involved in the specific task of building socialism in Cuba. Guevara studied Marxist literature extensively, and the changes experienced by socialist bloc countries in the 1960s. He elaborated the Budgetary Finance System which was opposed to the auto-financing defended by Carlos Rafael Rodrígues. This opposition was embodied in the Great Economic Debate. A crucial point of the discussion was the view on planning and the law of value. For Guevara, the latter could not be used to build socialism, whilst centralised planning was the 'defining category' of socialism. Explaining the context and the main measures of the New Economic Policy (NEP) applied in Soviet Russia in 1920s, this paper investigates Guevara's critical view on it, based on his methodological approach to Das Kapital. Guevara revealed a link between the NEP and market experiments of the 1960s, forecasting a return to capitalism in the USSR. Guevara's radical political economy is crucial for understanding his legacy holistically and may be considered a message to the countries and social movements of the Global South in their struggle for socialism, warning them away from distortion of Marxism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In nineteenth-century Cuba, the increasing and uneven use of passports for maritime travel generated confusion about their authority and encouraged their falsification. This essay explores the forgery and misuse of travel papers alongside the fabrications of an official colonial record that concealed the illegal transatlantic slave trade as it implemented documentary procedures for legal travel. Cuban officials pursued individuals who traveled without passports, with other people's passports, or lacked other papers, with a disproportionate focus on the circulation of free people of African descent. At the same time, the limited reach of government decrees and policies complicated strict determinations of transgression. Rather than taking this as evidence of a broken system, recognizing how various actors created the conditions for a collective susceptibility both to the authority conferred by passports and to plausible falsehoods lets us view borders, individual identity, and Caribbean mobility in new light. The essay calls on historians to approach the archival record of passports and mobility by balancing our retrospective recognition of falsifications with an awareness of fluctuating estimations of documentary veracity in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very little is known about the investment climate and operations of MNEs in Cuba due to limited data provided by the Cuban government. In this paper, we explore the investment climate in Cuba and identify factors that limit the activities of MNEs. We also assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the future prospects for MNEs in Cuba. Our research is based on questionnaires and semi-structured interviews in MNEs operating in Cuba. MNEs consider low macroeconomic stability, the impossibility of acquiring real estate, access to financing and the movement of capital, and profit repatriation as the most problematic factors for their business activities. On the other hand, IPR protection, corruption, the skills and education of the available workforce and the availability of electricity were assessed as the least problematic. Less than half of the MNEs interviewed found positive changes concerning the investment climate in Cuba during recent years. This implies limited prospects for economic growth in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the lyrics of reggaeton songs. Reggaeton is a popular genre nowadays, especially among young people. Its songs contain a very rich and sometimes surprising vocabulary. That was the reason for choosing this topic: to understand this genre of songs and their lyrics. Thus the purpose of this paper is to discover the meaning of the words used in the songs of this genre, to clarify the main vocabulary characteristics and to point out to the differences between the Spanish spoken in Latin America and Spain. In the analysis, specialized dictionaries were used to reveal the meaning of particular expressions. Attention was paid to expressions which are different from European Spanish as well as to English borrowings (anglicisms). Fifteen reggaeton songs from three countries (Puerto Rico, Cuba and Colombia) were chosen. Our findings showed that in each group (Puerto Rican, Cuban and Colombian), words typical of each of these countries were used in the songs. Anglicisms were also present, although to a different extent in each group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malacologists took notice of tree snails in the genus Liguus during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Since then, Liguus have undergone repeated shifts in identity as members of species, states, shell collections, backyard gardens, and engineered wildernesses. To understand what Liguus are, this paper examines snail enthusiasts, collectors, researchers, and conservationists—collectively self-identified as Liggers—in their varied landscapes. I argue that Liguus, both in the scientific imaginary and in the material landscape, mediated knowledge-making processes that circulated among amateur and professional malacologists across the United States and Cuba during the twentieth century. Beginning with an examination of early Liggers' work in Florida and Cuba, this paper demonstrates how notions of taxonomy and biogeography informed later efforts to understand Liguus hybridization and conservation. A heterogeneous community of Liggers has had varied and at times contradictory commitments informed by shifting physical, social, and scientific landscapes. Genealogizing those commitments illuminates the factors underpinning a decision to undertake the until now little-chronicled large-scale and sustained transplantation of every living Floridian form of Liguus fasciatus into Everglades National Park. The social history of Liggers and Liguus fundamentally blurs distinctions between professional scientists and amateur naturalists. The experiences of a diverse cast of Liggers and their Liguus snails historicize the complex character of human-animal relations and speak to the increasing endangerment of many similarly range-restricted invertebrates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aims of this paper were to study the biofouling and biodeterioration of photos and maps stored at Historical Archive of the Museum of La Plata (HAMP), Argentine, and two repositories of the National Archive of Cuba Republic (NARC) and to carry out the physiological characterization of the isolated fungi and bacteria. The role of the environmental microbiota in the biofouling formation was also studied. Microbial assemblages in the air were sampled by sedimentation technique while those on documents were sampled by swabbering. Biofilm formation and biofouling were monitored by scanning electron microscope (SEM). Large microbial assemblages were found at NARC archives with the prevalence of genera Aspergillus, Cladosporium and Penicillium, whereas at HAMP these values were lower, Penicillium was the only fungal genus detected. Most of the fungi degraded cellulose and produced pigments and acids, and all of the isolated bacteria had proteolytic and/or cellulolytic activity. In all cases, a higher concentration of viable bacteria than of fungi was isolated from documents. These results correlated with bacterial values detected in air at NARC repositories. However, this correlation cannot be observed at HAMP where Aspergillus, Penicillium and Talaromyces helicus (teleomorph of Penicillium) were isolated. It is the first time that the last genus is reported in documents., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This paper delineates a distinctly post-1960s expression of hunger and desire for food in Cuban and Egyptian cultural production. Hunger has always been present in aesthetic renditions of everyday life in both locales. Following the early-1960s socialist expansion of the role of the state, a new expression of hunger for animal protein emerged that relied on vegetarian tropes and parodied official discourse. Expressions of this "new hunger" captured the contradictory state of being conditioned, through state food programs, to see the consumption of animal products as the epitome of a healthy diet that endows one with the status of being "developed" and "modern" while simultaneously not being afforded satisfactory access to those food items due to conditions beyond one's individual control. In such contexts, the average citizen is primarily vegetarian and not by choice, while those with access to power live the promised dream of carnivorous plenty. This article analyzes several political speeches, cartoons, jokes, and songs to map the rhetorical and aesthetic characteristics of such satiric expressions and demonstrate how they were informed by the growing gap between early revolutionary official promises of food for all and actual food shortages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents the study of the behavior of a precast continuous beam-column joint that bases its structural work on the friction by wedge effect. It was used in an industrialized social buildings system with excellent performance and is intended to extend its use to architectural programs for residential buildings, which requires the study of the behavior of the beam-column joint. A computational model calibrated against full-scale test results, based on finite element method (FEM) implemented in the software Abaqus, is used. The present paper aims to evaluate the influence of the geometrical and physical-mechanical parameters on the deformational state of the joint. The geometrical parameters are inclination of the column faces and beam ribs that shape the wedge, and the number of slots on these faces, which contribute to the transmission of bending moments of the joint. The physical-mechanical parameters are the axial load on the column and the compressive strength of the concrete of the wedge that joins the beam and the column. To evaluate this influence, the absolute and relative vertical displacements between the beam and the wedge and the lateral displacement experienced by the wedge are determined, and the statistical analysis of the results are included. The influence of the inclination of the column depression, beam rib faces, and the number of slots on these faces in the development of the wedge effect of the joint is demonstrated. The results also demonstrate the positive influence of the increase in axial load on the development of the wedge effect as well as the need not to use a concrete with a compressive strength greater than 20 MPa in the wedge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural is the property of Sociedad Espanola para el Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Latin America, distribution networks are mostly radial, with high energy losses, representing about 16% of the region's electricity consumption. In Cuba, one of the alternatives that has been proposed to reduce these losses is the distribution of photovoltaic (PV) power plants of up to 3 MWp in them. This paper presents a new hybrid optimization algorithm to localize and size PV power plants to minimize energy losses in radial distribution networks. The method localizes the power plants using Empirical Discrete Metaheuristic in conjunction with a novel strategy that reduces the execution time of the algorithm. The sizes are found using the Coordinate Search Method, which performs one‐dimensional searches in the directions of the variables of the objective function. The algorithm was run on a 33‐bus IEEE test system in which up to five power plants were optimally installed, taking into account load variations at the distribution level and changes in the weather conditions under which the power plants operate. It should be noted that the execution times for each scenario did not exceed 30 s. The algorithm was validated by comparing it with other methods found in the literature and proved to be more efficient than them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the inventive everyday digital practices that Cubans have put into place to surf the waves of digital scarcity. The paper itself is an experiment in what Donna Haraway calls SF stories (Science Fiction, Speculative Fabulation or Speculative Feminism). We will engage in a process of speculative narrative exploring stories about digital practices in Cuba by connecting them to the animal world. Through the use of metaphors belonging to the world of aquatic creatures emerging in our collaborators' stories, we will address everyday digital practices as symbiotic assemblages. We argue that the speculative mixture of fabulation and aquatic metaphors can function as an antidote to simple dualistic reductions, perhaps offering a critical understanding of the meaning of digital technologies outside Western deterministic and dualistic categories. Part of a larger project on digital culture in Cuba, this paper aims to present a speculative work of fabulation where the animal world meets technology, creative writing and situated stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between media and politics in Cuba during the presidency of Raúl Castro (2006–2018). It contributes to the theoretical discussion about the approaches concerning change and continuity in media systems with empirical evidence from interviews with communication and political science experts, and an analysis of non-standardized content in academic, political, legal, and professional documents. The (re)structuring of the media system is explained by the most important political, economic, technological, and cultural events of the period studied: the survival of the Soviet media model, the impact of the U.S. conflict with Cuba on domestic politics, and a (de)territorialized notion of system boundaries. The patterns of change and continuity are discussed through the relationships among the State's participation in media and the fulfillment of media's democratic functions, the media policy projection and journalism cultures, and the political articulation of the media and development of the media industry. The articulations among these patterns highlight the relevance of a multidimensional approach as an interpretive dimension of media systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Universidad Médica Pinareña is the property of Editorial Ciencias Medicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Basketball is one of the students' favorite ball games, and it is also one of the most popular sports for college students to carry out after class. Especially in recent years, with the spread of NBA culture around the world and the extensive development of CUBA in domestic colleges and universities, Yao Ming has appeared in China to compete in the NBA and achieve brilliant achievements. With the increasing investment in the number of basketball venues, basketball itself, as a sport with low dependence on venues, equipment, and people, has the characteristics of economy, convenience, and remarkable sports effect compared with other sports. College students' basketball skills, basketball awareness, and love for basketball are increasing day by day. Attribute reduction algorithm is one of the core contents of knowledge discovery, which describes whether every attribute in the attribute set of information system is necessary and how to delete unnecessary knowledge. Based on the attribute reduction algorithm, this paper studies the early warning of basketball injury risk. The basketball injury can not only make athletes unable to participate in training or competition, but even cripple or lose their lives, which hinders the normal development of sports. Therefore, we should make a comprehensive and objective analysis of sports training to find out the causes of sports injuries, so as to prevent sports injuries. This algorithm takes the attribute frequency as the heuristic information and solves the attribute selection problem when the attribute frequency is the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of moral economy can be applied to all types of economies as they all involve conceptions of the 'common good' that determine who gets what, why and how, and who is responsible for this distribution, eg state or private actors. In this paper, we use the concept of moral economy to demonstrate how particular morals and logics shape public health governance in Cuba, comparing these with market liberal contexts. The paper draws from ethnographic and interview data from Cuba to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of Cuban agri-food governance, against the backdrop of market liberal approaches. While Cuban interviewees justified their activities in terms of Cuba's moral economy of collective need, there were also instances when the socialist moral economy conflicted with individual needs and aspirations. We conclude that, despite its faults, Cuba's holistic approach to food and agriculture illustrates how ecological approaches to public health might work in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is a semi-closed basin that supports high marine biodiversity, and is also an important economic area where the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of the United States, Mexico and Cuba converge. Twenty-one species of cetaceans are commonly sighted in the GOM, and although the population traits of most species are well known in the U.S. EEZ, the development of regional management plans complicated because of the apparent lack of ecological data in the Mexican EEZ, which comprises about 50% of the entire GOM. The state of knowledge of cetaceans in Mexican waters was reviewed to identify current research trends and gaps. The results clearly show that the Mexican research effort is focused on a few coastal popu- lations of a single species, the bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus), while the offshore cetacean populations are ignored; therefore, there are insuf- ficient data to assess diversity, distribution, and abundance. Moreover, due to the high mobility of cetaceans and the transboundary nature of their ranges, the scientific community is currently not prepared to detect population trends in cetacean populations of the GOM. To accomplish this, two priorities were identified: (1) to expand and refo- cus the Mexican research capabilities, and (2) to implement binational monitoring programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the existence of the Taíno people in Cuba and Jamaica and their alignment with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of 2030. The Caribbean has long had a narrative that the indigenous people – the Taíno – were made extinct after their encounter with Christopher Columbus in the 1500s. However, recent theoretical and empirical data have documented the survival and existence of indigenous people throughout the Caribbean. The goal of this paper is to contribute to a new narrative on Caribbean indigenous communities by documenting their current needs and challenges in achieving sustainability. It further recommends practical ways in which indigenous communities can be included in plans/goals for sustainability to ensure full alignment for the betterment of their people. Design/methodology/approach: This paper takes a qualitative case study approach coupled with a literature review of the Taíno of the Caribbean. Qualitative interviews were conducted with Caciques/Kasikes (Tribe Leaders) and members of Taíno communities in Jamaica and Cuba. Findings: The members of the indigenous communities' view community-based/indigenous tourism as a solution to preserve and sustain their heritage and provide income for their people; they provide strong recommendations on how this may be achieved in keeping with the 2030 SDGs. Originality/value: Academic literature that documents the modern day existence and experiences of the Caribbean indigenous people, especially in Cuba and Jamaica, is a clear gap. The goal of this paper is to provide a new theoretical framework/narrative on Caribbean indigenous communities and suggest practical ways in which they can be further integrated with tourism to ensure full alignment for the betterment and sustainability of their people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultramarathon openwater swimming (OWS) events are one of the toughest endurance challenges in the world. The sport has gained notoriety with athletes swimming across the English Channel, Diana Nyad swimming from Cuba to Florida, and the 5- and 10-km OWS in the Olympic schedule. The athletes who participate are exposed to dangerous conditions that expose risks inherent to the sport. The optimal time to prepare for an emergency is before it happens. The aim of this paper is to present an emergency action plan (EAP) designed for the "Swim Tuff" event, a record-breaking ultramarathon swim that took place in Rhode Island, United States. This article identifies an overview of Swim Tuff, the challenges experienced, and how the team designed and implemented risk mitigation strategies. The professionals looking over athletes completing an OWS should be educated and aware of the unique circumstances inherent to the sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the stability and toughness of North Korea's political regime from the perspective of radicalism and gradualism of the market economization. Since it is believed that gradualism keeps the regime stable. I examined the hypothesis that North Korea and Cuba effectively abandoned their socialist planned economy and introduced market economization after witnessing the economic crisis in China and Vietnam during the Cold War. As a result, North Korea and Cuba experienced the economic crisis and gradual economic development after the Cold War. The socialist planned economy remained an ideal in North Korea. Therefore, market economization became gradualism because of its suppression by the ideal in North Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cuba's economy has fluctuated strongly due to COVID-19 and natural disasters. In addition, sugar production, which is Cuba's main export product, also fell sharply. In the absence of underdeveloped industrial technologies and digitization, Cuba currently has to allocate its resources with even greater consideration. That's why utilization and optimization of sugar production and transport can take advantage of its inherent potential and reserves. After presenting the history of sugar production and its current, mainly local, technology, we present three simple methods, which do not require very professional knowledge nor expensive software or hardware to optimise these processes. We recommend the establishment of basic collection points, which would operate as specific logistics centres, with the role of service provision and pre-production in addition to the collection. Also, the paper proposes a method that can be used to design layouts in 3D, making the current sugar production process more compact and efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper responds to Asante et al. (in Hum Resour Health, 2014), providing an updated picture of the impacts of Cuban medical training in the Pacific region based on research carried out in 2019–2021, which focused on the experiences of Pacific Island doctors trained in Cuba and their integration into practice in their home countries. Methods: The research focussed on two case studies—Solomon Islands and Kiribati. Study methods for this research included multi-sited ethnographic methods and semi-structured interviews as well as qualitative analysis of policy documents, reports, and media sources. Results: The Cuban health assistance programme has had a significant impact on the medical workforce in the Pacific region increasing the number of doctors employed by Pacific Ministries of Health between 2012 and 2019. Qualitatively, there have been some notable improvements in the medical workforce and health delivery over this period. However, the integration of the Cuban-trained doctors into practise has been challenging, with criticisms of their clinical, procedural and communication skills, and the need for the rapid development of bridging and internship training programmes (ITPs) which were inadequately planned for at the outset of the programme. Conclusions: The Cuban programme in the Pacific is an important model of development assistance for health in the region. While Cuba's offer of scholarships was the trigger for a range of positive outcomes, the success of the programme has relied on input from a range of actors including support from other governments and institutions, and much hard work by the graduates themselves, often in the face of considerable criticism. Key impacts of the programme to date include the raw increase in the number of doctors and the development of the ITPs and career pathways for the graduates, although this has also led to the reorientation of Cuban graduates from preventative to curative health. There is considerable potential for these graduates to contribute to improved health outcomes across the region, particularly if their primary and preventative health care skills are utilised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The protection of forest cover in Cuba is a state priority. It is part of the state plan to deal with climate change. The purpose of this paper is to assess the legal risks associated with the protection of forest cover, which is essential to ensure the sustainability of hydrological watershed management in Cuba. The qualitative method of social research was followed. Techniques of content analysis, semi-structured interviews, and legal exegetics were applied. Geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing techniques were also used to triangulate data and results. This article provided a robust analytical framework for generating innovative laws for land planning through a three-phase methodological design associated with configuring, interpreting, and applying tools for stopping deforestation processes based on watershed management. As a result, it was demonstrated that limitations reveal a deficient legal application with risk in the river basin, and a significant causal relationship between institutions and communities. Furthermore, the study indicated that although there are legal norms that regulate the protection of forest cover in the studied basin, its vulnerabilities generate uncertainty about the foreseeable results in management of forest cover. It is recommended that the Provincial Council of Hydrographic Basins include the design of legal risk indicators for forest cover management into the sub-plan for forest area increase. These recommendations constitute a set of related actions to improve the sustainability of the above-mentioned management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interaction between domestic politics and foreign policy has recently grasped a great deal of scholarly as well as public attention. The existing literature primarily focuses on a host of domestic actors--the president, the legislature, the media, public opinion, interest groups and political parties--and how they connect with the making of foreign policy. This paper introduces a new angle--the impact of electoral cycles on foreign policy. When politicians mull over dramatic foreign policy breakthroughs, they consider how the timing of policy achievements can help their political standing. Of particular importance to the effect of political timing is the election cycle, which presidents and lawmakers strategically consider and yet, cannot arbitrarily change in representative democracies. In this paper, I give special attention to the post-midterm election period in the United States when the sitting president attempts to make a dramatic comeback from a political setback. The three historical case studies involve the U.S. normalization of relations with former adversaries, namely China, Vietnam, and Cuba. The context of American politics provides for a convenient experimental backdrop by which politicians face elections every other year with presidential contests every four years and congressional elections in between. Dealing with such politics of time, this article offers analytical analogies while not necessarily setting out to prove causal mechanisms. This firstcut research attempts to shed a new light on the way election strategy and foreign policy are linked in representative democracies and global communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]