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This report explores the history of Puerto Rico's relationship with the United States military and the resistance against militarization. Since the U.S. invasion in 1898, Puerto Rico has experienced the progressive takeover of land for military purposes, resulting in environmental damage and health repercussions. The resistance against militarism has taken various forms, including civil disobedience, marches, and armed struggle. The report showcases a collection of political propaganda, such as posters and pasquines, which were used to spread anti-militarist messages and mobilize people. These materials provide insight into the themes, styles, and campaigns of leftist propaganda between 1960 and 2000, highlighting the power imbalance between the armed forces and the common people. The report includes images and descriptions of selected propaganda pieces, demonstrating the diversity of styles and messages. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Documenta & Instrumenta is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid 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.)

Recent discoveries about the role of microorganisms in the establishment of the geological conditions in the planet have lead to the development of courses in Geomicrobiology. Unfortunately, most courses are designed for students with a strong Geology background, which is a limitation for universities that lack such courses. To overcome this limitation at our university, we have designed a special topics course entitled Introductory Geomicrobiology that was offered for the first time to undergraduate students from the Biology, Marine Biology and Microbiology Programs. To attract non-geology majors the course included topics such as description of Early Earth ecosystems, search for geo-biological signatures and current approaches in the search for extra-terrestrial life forms. An active learning environment was fostered throughout the course through different activities including oral reports of research papers in the subject, followed by Gallery Runs and class discussions. Our assessment strategies, both formative and summative, revealed that such presentations were an effective way to introduce students to eight main concepts of Geomicrobiology. Student performance was stronger in group discussions than individually, with Gallery Runs as the preferred class discussion technique. Overall, our assessment system proved that the design of the course was effective in teaching Geomicrobiology to nongeology majors.

An editorial introduction to the March 2012 issue is presented, discussing the central focus of papers presented at the World Library and Information Conference of San Juan, Puerto Rico held in August 2011, highlighting contributions by Mary Wilkins Jordan, Peter Stirling, and Ross Harvey.

Background: During the COVID−19 pandemic, clinics offering medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) needed to rapidly introduce unsupervised take−home dosing, while relapsing patients and patients unable to enter treatment faced increased risks of fentanyl−related overdose deaths and other drug−related harms. Based on a qualitative study of people who inject drugs (PWID) receiving MOUD treatment and MOUD staff in Puerto Rico, this paper documents the lived experiences of patients and providers during this period and the risk perceptions and management strategies to address substance misuse and drug diversion attributable to unsupervised take−home−dose delivery. Methods: In−depth qualitative interviews were conducted with patients (N = 25) and staff (N = 25) in two clinics providing MOUD in San Juan, Puerto Rico, during 2022. Patients and staff were receiving or providing treatment during the pandemic, and patients reported injection drug use during the past thirty days. Results: Patients were overwhelmingly male (84%), unmarried (72%), and unemployed (52%), with almost half (44%) injecting one to three times a day. Mean time in treatment was 7 years. Staff had a mean age of 46 years with more than half of the sample (63%) female. The majority of patients believed that unsupervised take−home dosing had no significant effect on their treatment adherence or engagement. In contrast, providers expressed concerns over the potential for drug diversion and possible increased risks of patient attrition, overdose episodes, and poor treatment outcomes. Conclusion: This study underscores the importance of insider perspectives on harm−reduction changes in policy implemented during a health crisis. Of note is the finding that staff disagreed among themselves regarding the potential harms of diversion and changes in drug testing protocols. These different perspectives are important to address so that future pandemic policies are successfully designed and implemented. Our study also illuminates disagreement in risk assessments between patients and providers. This suggests that preparation for emergency treatment plans requires enhanced communication with patients to match treatments to the context of lived experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Puerto Rico, an island heavily reliant on fossil fuels for primary electricity generation, faces challenges stemming from inadequate preventative maintenance, leading to an intermittently insufficient generation mix to meet overall load demand. Media coverage, exemplified by the Department of Energy PR100 study, delineates a strategic roadmap for transitioning Puerto Rico to achieve 100% renewable energy generation. This shift aims not only to mitigate dependence on fossil fuels but also to replace outdated conventional plants. Integrating inverter-interfaced renewable generation into the grid introduces a challenge, as these resources cannot match the short-circuit levels typically supplied by rotational synchronous generation. Complexity arises in determining whether existing protection schemes can maintain dependability during this transition or whether upgrades, such as adjustments to protection settings or philosophical enhancements, are imperative. This paper addresses this challenge by evaluating system strength at different stages of incorporating utility-scale renewable shares in the island system. It discerns the reduction in short-circuit currents for both three-phase faults and single-line-to-ground faults as conventional plants are phased out in favor of inverter-based resources. This research work also quantifies the impact of synchronous condensers and STATCOMs as a solution to strengthen the grid and increase short-circuit levels. This research equips the transmission operator with valuable insights into the necessary future system modifications to ensure the dependability and safety of the grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arte y Políticas de Identidad is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia 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 takes as a beginning point Ivan Illich's radical work on education and schooling, which began with his posting to Puerto Rico as vice-rector of the Catholic University at Ponce, in Puerto Rico, in 1956. This work continued with the Centre for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC), in Cuernavaca, Mexico, through the publication of Deschooling Society (1971) and beyond. Three distinct phases in Illich's conceptualization of schooling and education are traced. For the purpose of this paper, I will term them de-mythologizing, radical scrutinizing, and re-tooling). In the third phase, Illich and his colleague Edward Reimer posited that what is actually needed in reconsidering education is to improve human interaction with the tool of education. This insight formed part of Illich's 1973 book, Tools for Conviviality, in which he explored what such a project might look like. In this paper, this idea is pushed further. I offer some stories of Teme Augama Anishinaabe Elders from Turtle Island (North America) with whom I have worked for several years, along with my reflections, to suggest an altogether different view of learning and education, one which takes place in a context of abundance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Puerto Rico, a US territory, faces numerous challenges adversely affecting public health, including poverty, a fragile healthcare system, inadequate infrastructure, a debt crisis, and vulnerability to climate change-related natural disasters. The impact of these factors on the Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) measure has not been comprehensively evaluated. Only two studies have assessed HRQoL, with the latest conducted in 2011, prior to recent events that could affect public health. This study aimed to assess the HRQoL and associated sociodemographic and health risk factors among adults living in Puerto Rico in 2019. Methods: Prevalence and 95% confidence intervals were used to describe HRQoL and its associations with sociodemographic and health-related variables among adults living in Puerto Rico who answered the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey (n = 4,944) in 2019. Multivariable logistic regression models were developed to identify which of these variables were more likely to be associated with each of the four core HRQoL questions (HRQoL-4), expressed as prevalence odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals adjusted for potential confounders. Results: Through a comprehensive multivariable analysis, we uncovered significant risk factors – increasing number of chronic conditions, advanced age, and low income – associated with poor HRQoL among adults living in Puerto Rico. Specifically, our findings suggest that individuals with an increasing number of chronic conditions were more likely to report poor HRQoL across all 4 domains. As the number of reported chronic conditions increases by one, the odds of reporting having: fair/poor general health increased by a factor of 2.24 (POR: 2.24, 95% CI: 2.08–2.41), physical health impairment increased by a factor of 1.93 (POR: 1.93, 95% CI: 1.78–2.08), mental health impairment increased by a factor of 1.90 (POR: 1.90, 95% CI: 1.78–2.02) and activity limitation increased by a factor of 1.27 (POR: 1.27, 95% CI: 1.13–1.42). Advancing age was associated with all domains of poor HRQoL, except for the mental health domain for which we observed higher rates of poor HRQoL among the younger population (POR: 4.76, 95% CI: 2.4–9.1). Conclusion: This paper shows that the prevalence of poor HRQoL has not improved compared to the only previous study of HRQoL of Puerto Rico in the last decade. We also found that poor HRQoL is associated with having multiple chronic conditions in adults living in Puerto Rico. This may be a consequence of a decline in health services after natural disasters and socioeconomic downturns on the island. The study emphasizes the need for targeted interventions and ongoing monitoring of the population's HRQoL over time to reach vulnerable subgroups, especially those with chronic conditions, advanced age, and low income, in order to reduce health disparities in Puerto Rico. [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]

Infectious disease forecasting is of great interest to the public health community and policymakers, since forecasts can provide insight into disease dynamics in the near future and inform interventions. Due to delays in case reporting, however, forecasting models may often underestimate the current and future disease burden. In this paper, we propose a general framework for addressing reporting delay in disease forecasting efforts with the goal of improving forecasts. We propose strategies for leveraging either historical data on case reporting or external internet-based data to estimate the amount of reporting error. We then describe several approaches for adapting general forecasting pipelines to account for under- or over-reporting of cases. We apply these methods to address reporting delay in data on dengue fever cases in Puerto Rico from 1990 to 2009 and to reports of influenza-like illness (ILI) in the United States between 2010 and 2019. Through a simulation study, we compare method performance and evaluate robustness to assumption violations. Our results show that forecasting accuracy and prediction coverage almost always increase when correction methods are implemented to address reporting delay. Some of these methods required knowledge about the reporting error or high quality external data, which may not always be available. Provided alternatives include excluding recently-reported data and performing sensitivity analysis. This work provides intuition and guidance for handling delay in disease case reporting and may serve as a useful resource to inform practical infectious disease forecasting efforts. Author summary: The public health community and policymakers are interested in using models to predict future rates disease using information about disease rates in the past. However, our data about the recent past are less reliable than older data, due to a time lag between someone getting sick and their subsequent diagnosis being officially reported. In this paper, we describe strategies to correct reported disease rates from the recent past to account for disease diagnoses that haven't yet been reported. Using more accurate information about the recent past, we can do a better job predicting what will happen in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annales UMCS, Geographia, Geologia, Mineralogia et Petrographia is the property of Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin 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 reports an assessment of structure damages after the Richter magnitude 6.4 Puerto Rico earthquake that occurred on January 7, 2020. A review of the seismicity of the region and the postdisaster investigation of structural damages is first presented. The paper then focuses on explaining the failure modes of 2-story residential structures with open first story, which demonstrated the classical soft story behavior. The typological characterization of the failure modes is investigated using a nonlinear elastic dynamic analysis with a single degree of freedom model, which illustrates the contributions from partial to full construction of infill walls to the stiffness of the 2-story structures. The results indicate that the completion of the infill walls can significantly improve the stiffness of these structures and reduce damages to the structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Fentanyl and fentanyl-related analogues are the main drivers of overdose death in the USA, particularly among people who inject drugs (PWID). Despite the fact that non-Hispanic whites exhibit higher population rates of synthetic opioid mortality, overdose deaths have increased among African American and Latinos in urban areas. Yet little attention has been paid to the introduction of fentanyl among rural PWID in Puerto Rico. Methods: We conducted N = 38 in-depth interviews with PWID in rural Puerto Rico to document participants' experiences of injection drug use after the arrival of fentanyl and the strategies they implemented to manage overdose death risks. Results: Participants suggest that the arrival of fentanyl in large scale happened after Hurricane Maria in 2017; this coincided with a dramatic increase in overdose episodes and deaths. Fear of overdose deaths motivated some participants to substitute intravenous drug use for other forms of substance use or to seek MOUD. PWID that continued injection use resorted to conducting "hit tests," avoiding injecting alone, using naloxone, and employing fentanyl testing strips. Conclusions: While overdose deaths would have been higher without participants' willingness to adopt harm-reduction strategies, this paper illustrates the limits of these policies to address the current epidemic of fentanyl-related overdose deaths among this population. More studies are needed to understand how health disparities shape overdose risks for minority populations. However, major policy changes, in particular the revision of the harmful role of the War on Drugs and the termination of failed neoliberal economic policies that contribute to deaths of despair, should be addressed if we are to make a dent in this epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The movement of plant species across the globe exposes native communities to new species introductions. While introductions are pervasive, two aspects of variability underlie patterns and processes of biological invasions at macroecological scales. First, only a portion of introduced species become invaders capable of substantially impacting ecosystems. Second, species that do become invasive at one location may not be invasive in others; impacts depend on invader abundance and recipient species and conditions. Accounting for these phenomena is essential to accurately understand the patterns of plant invasion and explain the idiosyncratic results reflected in the literature on biological invasions. The lack of community‐level richness and the abundance of data spanning broad scales and environmental conditions have until now hindered our understanding of invasions at a macroecological scale. To address this limitation, we leveraged quantitative surveys of plant communities in the USA and integrated and harmonized nine datasets into the Standardized Plant Community with Introduced Status (SPCIS) database. The database contains 14,056 unique taxa identified within 83,391 sampling units, of which 52.6% have at least one introduced species. The SPCIS database includes comparable information on plant species occurrence, abundance, and native status across the 50 U.S. States and Puerto Rico. SPCIS can be used to answer macro‐scale questions about native plant communities and interactions with invasive plants. There are no copyright restrictions on the data, and we ask the users of this dataset to cite this paper, the respective paper(s) corresponding to the dataset sampling design (all references are provided in Data S1: Metadata S1: Class II‐B‐2), and the references described in Data S1: Metadata S1: Class III‐B‐4 as applicable to the dataset being utilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Catalan Journal of Linguistics is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona 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.)

Extreme climate-driven events such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires are becoming more intense in areas exposed to these threats, requiring approaches to improve the resilience of the electrical infrastructure serving these communities. Long-duration outages caused by such high impact events propagate to economic, health, and social consequences for communities. As essential service providers, electric utilities are mandated to provide safe, economical and reliable electricity to their customers. The public is becoming less tolerant to these more frequent disruptions, especially in view of technological advances that are intended to improve power quality, reliability and resilience. One promising solution is state-of-the-art microgrids and the advanced controls employed therein. This paper presents and demonstrates an approach to technoeconomic analysis that can be used to value the avoided economic consequences of grid resilience investments, as applied to the islands of Vieques and Culebra in Puerto Rico. This valuation methodology can support policies to incorporate resilience value into any investment decision-making process, especially those which serve the public interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modelling extreme values distributions, such as wave height time series where the higher waves are much less frequent than the lower ones, has been tackled from the point of view of the Peak-Over-Threshold (POT) methodologies, where modelling is based on those values higher than a threshold. This threshold is usually predefined by the user, while the rest of values are ignored. In this paper, we propose a new method to estimate the distribution of the complete time series, including both extreme and regular values. This methodology assumes that extreme values time series can be modelled by a normal distribution in a combination of a uniform one. The resulting theoretical distribution is then used to fix the threshold for the POT methodology. The methodology is tested in nine real-world time series collected in the Gulf of Alaska, Puerto Rico and Gibraltar (Spain), which are provided by the National Data Buoy Center (USA) and Puertos del Estado (Spain). By using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistical test, the results confirm that the time series can be modelled with this type of mixed distribution. Based on this, the return values and the confidence intervals for wave height in different periods of time are also calculated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) is an effective sampling strategy to recruit hard-to-reach populations but the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of this strategy in the collection of data involving human subjects, particularly among marginalized and vulnerable populations, is not known. Based on an ongoing study using RDS to recruit and study the interactions between HIV infection, injection drug use, and the microbiome in Puerto Rico, this paper explores the effectiveness of RDS during the pandemic and provided potential strategies that could improve recruitment and data collection. Results: RDS was employed to evaluate its effectiveness in recruiting a group of people who inject drugs (PWID) and controls (N = 127) into a study in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants were distributed among three subsets: 15 were HIV+ and PWID, 58 were HIV- PWID, and 54 were HIV+ and not PWID. Findings: Results show that recruitment through peer networks using RDS was possible across all sub-groups. Yet, while those in the HIV+ PWID sub-group managed to recruit from other-sub groups of HIV- PWID and HIV+, this occurred at a lower frequency. Conclusion: Despite the barriers introduced by COVID-19, it is clear that even in this environment, RDS continues to play a powerful role in recruiting hard-to-reach populations. Yet, more attention should be paid at how future pandemics, natural disasters, and other big events might affect RDS recruitment of vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While PWID of Puerto Rican origin have been migrating to the US for decades, the range of factors influencing their migration to the US and the resources they draw on to do so are not well understood. This is particularly true for rural Puerto Rican PWID, and the present study is the first empirical research to document migration patterns among this population. The specificities of their migration raise important challenges that need to be documented in order to implement more effective harm reduction policies at home (Puerto Rico) and abroad (US).Methods: This paper draws from data obtained employing a modified NHBS survey which was administered to (N =296) PWID in four rural municipalities of Puerto Rico with participants 18 years or older. The primary dependent variables for this paper are the number of times a person has lived in the continental US, and if they are planning on moving to the continental US in the future.Results: Findings suggest that 65% of the sample reported ever lived in the US and that 49% are planning on moving in the future. The number of times living in the US is associated with higher education and older age, but not with self-reported positive HIV or HCV statuses. Planning to move to the US is associated with knowing PWID who have moved or plan to move, negatively associated with age, and is not associated with HIV or HCV status. Around one third of those that lived in the US reported having some sort of support, with the majority receiving support from family sources. No participant received help to enter HIV/HCV treatment.Conclusions: A multi-region approach to prevention is required to make a dent in curbing HIV/HCV transmission in this population. Understanding PWID migration patterns, risk behaviors, and health care needs in the US is now more important than ever as natural disasters prompted by human-made climate change will only increase in the future, raising demands not only for service providers but also harm reduction policies to cope with an increasing influx of "climate refugees" as PWID move across national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Económicos is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC 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.)

The PROTECT research Center funded by the NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Superfund Research Program was launched in 2010 to explore the impact of exposure to pollutants on the high rate of premature births in Puerto Rico. In September 2017, Hurricanes Irma and María devastated the archipelago, which caused: collapse of the electrical system, collapse of the communication system, limited access to clean water, food, gas, and health services, destruction of public (e.g., hospitals) and private property (e.g., houses) and more than 4500 deaths. Pregnant and postpartum individuals are especially vulnerable to natural disasters. They face difficulty obtaining adequate pre- and post-natal care, are exposed to increased risk of miscarriage, premature delivery, and giving birth to low birth weight babies during and after disasters and are also more likely to suffer physical and mental health problems compared to the general population during and after disasters. A face-to-face questionnaire was administered to PROTECT participants who were pregnant during hurricanes Irma or Maria or who became pregnant shortly after in order to identify hurricane-related sources of stress and other adverse effects. This paper is based on the answers to the open-ended question at the end of the questionnaire where participants were asked to share their experiences during and after the hurricanes. Among the 375 participants who completed the survey, 76 answers to the open-ended question were considered due to data saturation. The answers to the open-ended question were transcribed into a document in order to facilitate the coding process. The transcribed text was analyzed first to identify emerging categories and then coded to identify common themes as well as divergence among participants. The following themes were identified: pregnancy and birth challenges, lack of access to basic services, housing conditions, stressful working conditions, concerns about health, concerns about their children, and positive or protective aspects. The results indicate how the disruption in access to basic services has a unique impact on the physical and mental health of pregnant and post-partum women in an emergency situation. These findings point to the potential benefit of developing specific protocols designed for emergency preparedness aimed at this population, which can inform healthcare providers and community organizations in case of future events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Boletín de Filología is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofia y Humanidades 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.)

Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships are in the development stage and they play an important role in the upcoming future. Present generation ships are semi-autonomous and controlled by the ship crew. The performance of the ship is predicted using the data collected from the ship with the help of machine learning and deep learning methods. Path planning for an autonomous ship is necessary for estimating the best possible route with minimum travel time and it depends on the weather. However, even during the navigation, there will be changes in weather and it should be predicted in order to reroute the ship. The weather information such as wave height, wave period, seawater temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, etc., is collected by ship external sensors, weather stations, buoys, and satellites. This paper investigates the ensemble machine learning approaches and seasonality approach for wave data prediction. The historical meteorological data are collected from six stations near Puerto Rico offshore and Hawaii offshore. We explore ensemble machine learning techniques on the data collected. The collected data are divided into training and testing data and apply machine learning models to predict the test data. The hyperparameter optimization is performed to find the best parameters before fitting on train data, this is essential to find the best results. Multivariate analysis is performed with all the methods and errors are computed to find the best models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the pigment characterization in six impressionist and post-impressionist paintings by three leading Puerto Rican artists: Francisco Oller (1833–1917), José Cuchí y Arnau (1857–1925), and Ramón Frade (1875–1954). The paintings, belonging to the Corporación de las Artes Musicales and Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (San Juan, Puerto Rico), were investigated through a combination of complementary non- and micro-invasive scientific techniques. The use of non-invasive macro-X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) and reflectance imaging spectroscopy (RIS) was applied for the first time to characterize Puerto Rican artists' palette. The non-invasive approach was integrated with spectroscopic techniques such as Raman and/or Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, as well as high pressure liquid chromatography coupled to diode array detector and tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-DAD-MS/MS), when sampling was possible. While this technical investigation reveals pigments that are typical for late 19th/early twentieth century paintings, it also emphasizes some unexpected findings, including the use of cobalt green and synthetic yellow lakes, which enabled the date given to some of the paintings to be refined to post 1910 rather than their current dates of ca. 1890. This study confirms that the Puerto Rican artist's palettes are very similar to their European contemporaries, underscoring both their European training and their attempt to adapt these methods of painting to a new Caribbean identity emerging from the Spanish American War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on an initiative that attempted to improve the number and quality of publications in peer-reviewed journals by young engineering faculty members of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. Activities within the initiative; Challenges related to publishing; Reasons young researchers want to publish; Conclusions.

The Deep Autonomous Profiler (DAP) is a full-ocean-depth profiler rated to 11 km. Its hydrographic profiles and water samples can provide information on physical oceanographic properties, seawater composition, and biological communities at every depth in the ocean. Designed around a 24-bottle rosette, the DAP is an untethered system able to autonomously collect temperature, salinity, and oxygen profiles, as well as water samples. An adaptive sampling method was developed to analyze the water-column data to identify and sample desired features while under way. Acoustic ranging-only tracking is used to monitor and geolocate the system underwater. In September 2018 the vehicle was tested to 8377 m in the Puerto Rico Trench. The DAP was able to generate full-ocean-depth profiles and collect water samples at both preset and adaptively determined depths. To demonstrate the utility of the DAP, we radiocarbon dated the deepest water sampled in the Puerto Rico Trench, providing the first direct evidence of hadal water-mass age in the trench: 318 ± 25 yr. This paper presents an overview of the DAP system and the Puerto Rico Trench sea trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, the University of Alabama-Huntsville configured their GOES satellited-based solar radiation product to include Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands (USVI), Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba. The half-hourly and daily integrated data are available at 1 km resolution for Puerto Rico and the USVI and 2 km for Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Cuba. These data made it possible to implement estimates of satellite radiation-based evapotranspiration methods on all of the islands. The use of the solar radiation data in combination with estimates of other climate parameters facilitated the development of a water and energy balance algorithm for Puerto Rico. The purpose of this paper is to describe the theoretical background and technical approach for estimating the components of the daily water and energy balance. The operational water and energy balance model is the first of its kind in Puerto Rico. Model validation results are presented for reference and actual evapotranspiration, soil moisture, and streamflow. Mean errors for all analyses were less than 7%. The water and energy balance model results can benefit such diverse fields as agriculture, ecology, coastal water management, human health, renewable energy development, water resources, drought monitoring, and disaster and emergency management. This research represents a preliminary step in developing a suite of gridded hydro-climate products for the Caribbean Region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flooding during extreme weather events damages critical infrastructure, property, and threatens lives. Hurricane María devastated Puerto Rico (PR) on 20 September 2017. Sixty-four deaths were directly attributable to the flooding. This paper describes the development of a hydrologic model using the Gridded Surface Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis (GSSHA), capable of simulating flood depth and extent for the Añasco coastal flood plain inWestern PR. The purpose of the study was to develop a numerical model to simulate flooding from extreme weather events and to evaluate the impacts on critical infrastructure and communities; Hurricane María is used as a case study. GSSHA was calibrated for Irma, a Category 3 hurricane, which struck the northeastern corner of the island on 7 September 2017, two weeks before Hurricane María. The upper Añasco watershed was calibrated using United States Geological Survey (USGS) stream discharge data. The model was validated using a storm of similar magnitude on 11--13 December 2007. Owing to the damage sustained by PR's WSR-88D weather radar during Hurricane María, rainfall was estimated in this study using the Weather Research Forecast (WRF) model. Flooding in the coastal floodplain during Hurricane María was simulated using three methods: (1) Use of observed discharge hydrograph from the upper watershed as an inflow boundary condition for the coastal floodplain area, along with the WRF rainfall in the coastal flood plain; (2) Use of WRF rainfall to simulate runoff in the upper watershed and coastal flood plain; and (3) Similar to approach (2), except the use of bias-corrected WRF rainfall. Flooding results were compared with forty-two values of flood depth obtained during face-to-face interviews with residents of the affected communities. Impacts on critical infrastructure (water, electric, and public schools) were evaluated, assuming any structure exposed to 20 cm or more of flooding would sustain damage. Calibration equations were also used to improve flood depth estimates. Our model included the influence of storm surge, which we found to have a minimal effect on flood depths within the study area. Water infrastructure was more severely impacted by flooding than electrical infrastructure. From these findings, we conclude that the model developed in this study can be used with sufficient accuracy to identify infrastructure affected by future flooding events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Latin American Law Review is the property of Universidad de los Andes 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 investigates the consequences of a large and sustained liquidity infusion on the real economy using Section 936 tax incentives in Puerto Rico as a natural experiment. I find that the tax incentives increased liquidity and lowered the cost of funds for PR banks. Furthermore, 936 funds stimulated C&I and real estate loans. However, the incidence of troubled loans increases with the amount of 936 funds received, pointing to excessive and inefficient financing in those sectors. The implementation and subsequent removal of these incentives induced a structural shift in Puerto Rico's economy, generating an unintended and long‐lasting boom‐bust cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Económicos is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC 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 studies the possible role of US trade liberalization in explaining Puerto Rico's deindustrialization. In order to address this issue, time series techniques were used. The results of the Granger Causality Test suggest that the imports made by the US from Mexico, Canada, Ireland, and Costa Rica do not explain Puerto Rico's deindustrialization. Therefore, no causal relationship was found between the imports made by the US from its NAFTA partners and the countries where the corporations that benefited from Section 936 relocated with the deindustrialization of Puerto Rico. Besides, the impulse response exercise suggests that in the first period, deindustrialization explains its variability by 100%, and in the final period, it explains 95.47%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives / Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas / Arquivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas is the property of Educational Policy Analysis Archives & Education Review 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.)

Many applications have been developed for electronic data collection. However, offline field navigation tools incorporating secure electronic data capture and field visit tracking are currently scarce. We created an R-Shiny application, HTrack (Household Tracking), for use on encrypted Android devices in the field. The application was implemented in the Communities Organized to Prevent Arboviruses (COPA) project, a study beginning in 2018 to better understand arboviral disease incidence in 38 communities in Puerto Rico. The application was used to navigate to randomly selected structures and capture visit outcomes after conducting multiple visits for participant recruitment. It also served as a bridge to an alternate software, Epi Info, to collect participant-level questionnaire data. This application successfully captured each visit outcome and improved the logistics of field level activities for the COPA project, eliminating the use of paper maps for navigation. We show the development of HTrack and comment on the limitations and strengths of this application and further improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, besides the US territory Puerto Rico, Hawai'i is the only state that grows commercial coffee. In Hawai'i, coffee is the second most valuable agricultural commodity. Health benefits associated with moderate coffee consumption, including its antioxidant capacity, have been correlated to its bioactive components. Post-harvest techniques, coffee variety, degree of roasting, and brewing methods significantly impact the metabolites, lipids, minerals, and/or antioxidant capacity of brewed coffees. The goal of our study was to understand the impact of roasting and brewing methods on metabolites, lipids, biogenic amines, minerals, and antioxidant capacity of two Hawai'i-grown coffee (Coffea arabica) varieties, "Kona Typica" and "Yellow Catuai". Our results indicated that both roasting and coffee variety significantly modulated several metabolites, lipids, and biogenic amines of the coffee brews. Furthermore, regardless of coffee variety, the antioxidant capacity of roasted coffee brews was higher in cold brews. Similarly, total minerals were higher in "Kona Typica" cold brews followed by "Yellow Catuai" cold brews. Hawai'i-grown coffees are considered "specialty coffees" since they are grown in unique volcanic soils and tropical microclimates with unique flavors. Our studies indicate that both Hawai'i-grown coffees contain several health-promoting components. However, future studies are warranted to compare Hawai'i-grown coffees with other popular brand coffees and their health benefits in vivo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the critical analysis of the level of the participation of various people who took part in the annual congress of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) such as the attendees, speakers, and presenters in Puerto Rico on August 13 and 18, 2011.

This paper focuses on the surface-atmospheric interaction in a tropical coastal city including the validation of an atmospheric modeling and an impact study of land-cover and land-use (LCLU) changes. The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS), driven with regional reanalysis data for a 10-day simulation, is used to perform the study in the San Juan metropolitan area (SJMA), one of the largest urban conglomerations in the Caribbean, which is located in the island of Puerto Rico and taken as the test case. The model's surface characteristics were updated using airborne high-resolution remote sensing information to obtain a more accurate and detailed configuration of the SJMA. Surface and rawinsonde data from the San Juan Airborne Thermal and Land Applications Sensor (ATLAS) Mission are used to validate the modeling system, yielding satisfactory results in surface/canopy temperature, near-surface air temperatures, and vertical profiles. The impact analysis, performed with the updated SJMA configuration and a potential natural vegetation (PNV) scenario, showed that the simulation with specified urban LCLU indexes in the bottom boundary produced higher air temperatures over the area occupied by the city, with positive values of up to 2.5°C. The same analysis showed changes in the surface radiative balance in the urban case attributed to modifications in the LCLU. This additional heat seems to motivate additional vertical convection that may be leading to possible urban-induced precipitation downwind of the SJMA. This was evident in a precipitation disturbance when the city is present (∼0.9 mm, 22.5% increase) captured by the model that was accompanied by increases in cloud formation and vertical motions mainly downwind of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robust empirical evidence supports the idea that embryonic and, more generally, intrauterine disruptions induced by the 1918-flu pandemic had long-term consequences on adult health status and other conditions. In this paper we assess the 1918-flu long-term effects not just of in utero exposure but also during infancy and early childhood. A unique set of events that took place in Puerto Rico during 1918-1919 generated conditions of a "double quasi-natural experiment". We exploit these conditions to empirically identify effects of exposure to the 1918 flu pandemic and those of the devastation left by an earthquake-tsunami that struck the island in 1918. Because the earthquake-tsunami affected mostly the Western coast of the island whereas early (in utero and postnatal) exposure to the flu was restricted to those born in the interval 1917-1920, we use geographic variation to identify the effects of the quake and timing of birth variation to identify those of the flu. We benefit from availability of information on markers of nutritional status in a nationally representative sample of individuals aged 75 and older in 2002. We make two contributions. First, unlike most fetal-origins research that singles out early nutritional status as a determinant of adult health, we hypothesize that the 1918 flu damaged the nutritional status of adult survivors who, at the time of the flu, were in utero or infants. Second, we target markers of nutritional status largely set when the adult survivors were infants and young children. Estimates of effects of the pandemic are quite large mostly among females and those who were exposed to the earthquake-tsunami. Impacts of the flu in areas less affected by the earthquake are smaller but do vary by area flu severity. These findings constitute empirical evidence supporting the conjecture that effects of the 1918 flu and/or the earthquake are associated not just with disruption experienced during the fetal period but also postnatally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]