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The term “neoliberalism” has variable and broad meanings. It has even been suggested that we should dispense with the term altogether. However, in this text, I defend that we can find a very powerful concept of neoliberalism in the works of Dardot-Laval, and Brown. These thinkers show us that neoliberalism needs to be conceived as a rationality that produces a specific kind of human subjectivity, namely, the neoliberal Homo Oeconomicus or the Homo Neoliberalis. Such a concept is, in addition, crucial to understand the most recent and visible changes in Latin American religiosity, that is, the so-called “Latin American Protestant Turn”. This turn, as has been noted, should be more precisely called the “Latin American Pentecostal Turn”. Based on empirical studies that describe the main elements of this turn, I describe what seems to be the principal traits of the religiosity of the Latin American Homo Neoliberalis.

The flow of air generated by a new design of air assisted sprayer equipped with two axial fans of reversed rotation was analyzed. For this goal, a 3D sonic anemometer has been used (accuracy: 1.5%; measurement range: 0 to 45 m/s). The study was divided into a static test and a dynamic test. During the static test, the air velocity in the working vicinity of the sprayer was measured considering the following machine configurations: (1) one activated fan regulated at three air flows (machine working as a traditional sprayer); (2) two activated fans regulated at three air flows for each fan. In the static test 72 measurement points were considered. The location of the measurement points was as follow: left and right sides of the sprayer; three sections of measurement (A, B and C); three measurement distances from the shaft of the machine (1.5 m, 2.5 m and 3.5 m); and four measurement heights (1 m, 2 m, 3 m and 4 m). The static test results have shown significant differences in the module and the vertical angle of the air velocity vector in function of the regulations of the sprayer. In the dynamic test, the air velocity was measured at 2.5 m from the axis of the sprayer considering four measurement heights (1 m, 2 m, 3 m and 4 m). In this test, the sprayer regulations were: one or two activated fans; one air flow for each fan; forward speed of 2.8 km/h. The use of one fan (back) or two fans (back and front) produced significant differences on the duration of the presence of wind in the measurement point and on the direction of the air velocity vector. The module of the air velocity vector was not affected by the number of activated fans.

Ecuador’s credit unions or COACs play a key role inside the local economy, and the pandemic period has shown the weakness of the entities. Understanding the efficiency of the country’s largest COACs and the different factors related to it can provide important information for policymakers and the sector in general. Therefore, our main goal was the evaluation of technical efficiency and the factors that influenced it during the years from 2009 to 2020 which included the pandemic period. For this, the DEA model was applied with production and intermediation focus, and this was applied to 19 COACs from the first segment of the sector. Findings reveal that the level of technical efficiency was larger in the pre-pandemic than the pandemic period. Efficient credit unions were characterized by higher profitability, low levels of liquidity and portfolio coverage, and a high rate of financial intermediation, among others, through the pre-pandemic period; however, debt restructuring was one the most important characteristics of nonefficient Credit Unions. The most important contribution of this study is the possible projection of different decisions that will allow the COACs to improve their role in the system given all the difficulties that the pandemic is causing around the world.

Breast cancer is one of the major public health issues and is considered a leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women worldwide. Its early diagnosis can effectively help in increasing the chances of survival rate. To this end, biopsy is usually followed as a gold standard approach in which tissues are collected for microscopic analysis. However, the histopathological analysis of breast cancer is non-trivial, labor-intensive, and may lead to a high degree of disagreement among pathologists. Therefore, an automatic diagnostic system could assist pathologists to improve the effectiveness of diagnostic processes. This paper presents an ensemble deep learning approach for the definite classification of non-carcinoma and carcinoma breast cancer histopathology images using our collected dataset. We trained four different models based on pre-trained VGG16 and VGG19 architectures. Initially, we followed 5-fold cross-validation operations on all the individual models, namely, fully-trained VGG16, fine-tuned VGG16, fully-trained VGG19, and fine-tuned VGG19 models. Then, we followed an ensemble strategy by taking the average of predicted probabilities and found that the ensemble of fine-tuned VGG16 and fine-tuned VGG19 performed competitive classification performance, especially on the carcinoma class. The ensemble of fine-tuned VGG16 and VGG19 models offered sensitivity of 97.73% for carcinoma class and overall accuracy of 95.29%. Also, it offered an F1 score of 95.29%. These experimental results demonstrated that our proposed deep learning approach is effective for the automatic classification of complex-natured histopathology images of breast cancer, more specifically for carcinoma images.

The fluid velocity inside the tank of agricultural sprayers is an indicator of the quality of the mixture. This study aims to formulate the best generalized linear mixed model to infer the fluid velocity inside a tank under specific operational parameters of the agitation system, such as liquid level, circuit pressures, and number of active nozzles. A complex model was developed that included operational parameters as fixed effects (FE) and the section of the tank as the random effect. The goodness of fit of the model was evaluated by considering the lowest values of Akaike’s information criteria and Bayesian information criterion, and by estimating the residual variance. The gamma distribution and log-link function enhanced the goodness of fit of the best model. The Toeplitz structure was chosen as the structure of the covariance matrix. SPSS and SAS software were used to compute the model. The analysis showed that the greatest influence on the fluid velocity was exerted by the liquid level in the tank, followed by the circuit pressure and, finally, the number of active nozzles. The development presented here could serve as a guide for formulating models to evaluate the efficiency of the agitation system of agricultural sprayers.

An agricultural implement for underground application of rodenticide bait to control the Mediterranean pocket gopher (Microtus Duodecimcostatus) in fruit orchards has been designed and tested. The main objective of this research was to design and test the implement by using the finite element method (FEM) and considering a range of loads generated on most commonly used furrow openers in agricultural implements. As a second step, the prototype was tested in the field by analysing the effects of forward speed and application depth on the mechanical behaviour of the implement structure. The FEM was used in the design phase and a prototype was manufactured. The structural strains on the prototype chassis under working conditions were tested by using strain gauges to validate the design phase. Three forward speeds (4.5, 5.5, and 7.0 km/h), three application depths (0.12, 0.15, and 0.17 m), and two types of soil (clayey-silty-loam and clayey-silty-sandy) were considered. The prototype was validated successfully by analysing the information obtained from the strain gauges. The Von Mises stresses indicated a safety coefficient of 1.9 for the most critical load case. Although both forward speed and application depth had a significant effect on the stresses generated on the chassis, the latter parameter critically affected the structural behaviour of the implement. The effects of the application depth on the strains were linear such that strains increased with depth. In contrast, strains remained roughly constant regardless of variation in the forward speed.

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the air flow generated by an air-assisted sprayer equipped with two axial fans was developed and validated by practical experiments in the laboratory. The CFD model was developed by considering the total air flow supplied by the sprayer fan to be the main parameter, rather than the outlet air velocity. The model was developed for three air flows corresponding to three fan blade settings and assuming that the sprayer is stationary. Actual measurements of the air velocity near the sprayer were taken using 3D sonic anemometers. The workspace sprayer was divided into three sections, and the air velocity was measured in each section on both sides of the machine at a horizontal distance of 1.5, 2.5, and 3.5 m from the machine, and at heights of 1, 2, 3, and 4 m above the ground The coefficient of determination (R2) between the simulated and measured values was 0.859, which demonstrates a good correlation between the simulated and measured data. Considering the overall data, the air velocity values produced by the CFD model were not significantly different from the measured values.

An acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) was used to analyse the impact of an agricultural sprayer’s agitation system settings on fluid velocities inside the tank. A 3000 L capacity sprayer equipped with a 4-nozzle hydraulic agitation system was used. ADV measurements were carried at 32 points inside the tank under the following settings: circuit pressures of 8, 10, or 12 bar; water level in the tank of 1000, 2000, or 3000 L; 2 or 4 active nozzles. An agitation test with a concentration of 0.4% copper oxychloride was employed to analyse the concentration of active matter as a function of tank fill level and number of active nozzles. All parameters significantly affected the fluid velocity, which increased with increasing pressure, but decreased with increasing water level in the tank and an increased number of active nozzles. Concentration tests showed greater active matter concentrations when higher velocities were recorded by the ADV. The ADV was shown to be a useful tool for the rapid assessment of fluid velocities; in the future, it could be used to validate the design of agitation systems, and to estimate their capacity to ensure an adequate level of active matter concentration in the fluid.