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Migration, from rural to urban settings is a common phenomenon in Latin America, due to social, economic, political, and other factors. Young people in search of economic and educational opportunities, financial, and social stability, have been migrating to larger urban centers, thus crafting important shifts in rural labor, generational transfer, and domestic economies. Through a systematic literature review of scientific literature, and documents from public institutions and international organizations, published between 2012 and 2022, this article addresses rural–urban migration of youth in Colombia and Guatemala’s cattle sector, particularly identifying (i) driving factors, (ii) their impacts on cattle farming, and (iii) public policies implemented to counteract prejudicial effects. Results show that unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, and insecurity are the main reasons for youth migration to cities or abroad, with Mexico, the United States, and Spain being the most common destinations. Additionally, impacts on the cattle sector include shortage of labor and a perfectible generational transfer, hindering the modernization of the industry and investments in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. Despite various implemented public policies, the results are partial, and the issue of accelerated youth migration remains relevant. Consequently, without more effective measures adopted by national governments, the cattle sector will lag behind its regional and international competitors, deterring the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. As the main contribution of the study, the analysis of migration is highlighted based on its effects on a specific economic sector and not focused on its causes, as evidenced in a wide range of literature.

Food industry is increasingly using functional ingredients to improve the food product quality. Lipid-containing functional ingredients are important sources of nutrients. This review examines the current state of emulsification and stabilisation technologies for incorporating lipophilic functional ingredients into food systems. Lipophilic functional ingredients, such as omega-3 fatty acids, carotenoids, and fat-soluble vitamins, offer numerous health benefits but present challenges due to their limited solubility in water-based food matrices. Emulsification techniques enable the dispersion of these ingredients in aqueous environments, facilitating their inclusion in a variety of food products. This review highlights recent advances in food emulsion formulation, emulsification methods and stabilisation techniques which, together, improve the stability and bioavailability of lipophilic compounds. The role of various emulsifiers, stabilizers, and encapsulation materials in enhancing the functionality of these ingredients is also explored. Furthermore, the review discusses different stabilisation techniques which can yield in emulsion in a solid or liquid state. By providing a comprehensive overview of current technologies, this review aims to guide future research and application in the development of functional foods enriched with lipophilic ingredients.

High-oleic palm oil is a food-grade oil with desirable properties, as it is characterised by having an oleic acid concentration above 50 % and a high vitamin E and provitamin A content. This study investigated the effect of different combinations of two wall materials (whey protein (WP) and Capsul®, a commercial octenyl succinic anhydride modified starch (OSA-MS)) on the concentration of provitamin A, vitamin E and oleic acid, and the physical properties of high oleic palm oil emulsions encapsulated by Refractance Window drying technology. Wall material composition significantly affected (p

Abstract Action-concept outcomes are useful targets to identify Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and differentiate between those with and without mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI, PD-nMCI). Yet, most approaches employ burdensome examiner-dependent tasks, limiting their utility. We introduce a framework capturing action-concept markers automatically in natural speech. Patients from both subgroups and controls retold an action-laden and a non-action-laden text (AT, nAT). In each retelling, we weighed action and non-action concepts through our automated Proximity-to-Reference-Semantic-Field (P-RSF) metric, for analysis via ANCOVAs (controlling for cognitive dysfunction) and support vector machines. Patients were differentiated from controls based on AT (but not nAT) P-RSF scores. The same occurred in PD-nMCI patients. Conversely, PD-MCI patients exhibited reduced P-RSF scores for both texts. Direct discrimination between patient subgroups was not systematic, but it yielded best outcomes via AT scores. Our approach outperformed classifiers based on corpus-derived embeddings. This framework opens scalable avenues to support PD diagnosis and phenotyping.

Light-absorbing carbonaceous particles (LAC) may cause and/or exacerbate non-communicable diseases, interfere with the Earth's radiative balance, darken urban buildings and impair vistas. In this study, we explored the temporal behaviour of LAC concentrations measured at wavelengths of 370 nm (brown carbon, BrC) and 880 nm (black carbon, BC) at two sites of a mid-sized city in Brazil. We observed sharp changes in LAC concentrations at the city centre site in response to variations in traffic volume. The highest concentrations were observed when winds originated from both the city core and from the direction of the bus terminal. The suburban site exhibited a notably uniform diurnal pattern and consistently lower LAC concentrations throughout the day. Nevertheless, substantial increases during the evening led to mean BrC and BC concentrations (2.6 and 2.2 μg m−3, respectively) comparable to daytime peaks observed in the city centre (3 μg m−3 and 2.5 μg m−3). This phenomenon was attributed to the burning of residential waste and overgrown vegetation in nearby vacant lots. Moreover, the highest concentrations coincided with periods of low wind speeds, usually linked to non-buoyant plumes from point sources. BrC concentrations surpassed BC concentrations, even at the city centre site. Not only was the Ångström absorption exponent (Å370/880) larger at the suburban site compared to the city centre (95th percentiles of 1.73 and 1.38, respectively), but it also exhibited a wider span. Overall, the combined LAC and Å370/880 data indicated that i) biomass burning is a major source of LAC at the suburban site; ii) at the city centre, bare BC particles may become internally mixed with BrC from biomass or fossil fuel emissions and enhance absorption at lower wavelengths. The occurrence of LAC peaks outside the evening rush hours suggests that other sources but on-road vehicular emissions may contribute to the deterioration of the air quality in the urban core. Tackling air quality across the urban perimeter requires targeting other potential sources but traffic emissions.

Scientific research is increasingly conclusive regarding the responsibility of food production in environmental issues, a situation that contrasts with greater consumer awareness. In this context, sustainability labels for meat have emerged, which offer a guarantee that production is based on principles of animal welfare, and carbon neutrality, among others. Since research on this subject is scarce, the objective of this article is to identify and analyze the initiatives and development of this type of labeling in Latin America and the Caribbean. For this purpose, a qualitative-descriptive study is carried out based on primary and secondary sources. The results show different types of progress in the main producing countries, with Uruguay and Brazil standing out as success stories. At the same time, difficulties are highlighted in the different stages of the production chain, such as low demand, or traceability. It is concluded that, despite the challenges, the transition to sustainable cattle farming is inevitable. However, this process will not happen spontaneously, but must be coordinated up with other types of strategies and the actions of various actors including governments, policymakers, and NGOs.

Abstract The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study enrolled 8676 children, 3–4 months of age, born with HLA-susceptibility genotypes for islet autoimmunity (IA) and type 1 diabetes (T1D). Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) was performed in 1119 children in a nested case–control study design. Telomere length was estimated from WGS data using five tools: Computel, Telseq, Telomerecat, qMotif and Motif_counter. The estimated median telomere length was 5.10 kb (IQR 4.52–5.68 kb) using Computel. The age when the blood sample was drawn had a significant negative correlation with telomere length (P = 0.003). European children, particularly those from Finland (P = 0.041) and from Sweden (P = 0.001), had shorter telomeres than children from the U.S.A. Paternal age (P = 0.019) was positively associated with telomere length. First-degree relative status, presence of gestational diabetes in the mother, and maternal age did not have a significant impact on estimated telomere length. HLA-DR4/4 or HLA-DR4/X children had significantly longer telomeres compared to children with HLA-DR3/3 or HLA-DR3/9 haplogenotypes (P = 0.008). Estimated telomere length was not significantly different with respect to any IA (P = 0.377), IAA-first (P = 0.248), GADA-first (P = 0.248) or T1D (P = 0.861). These results suggest that telomere length has no major impact on the risk for IA, the first step to develop T1D. Nevertheless, telomere length was shorter in the T1D high prevalence populations, Finland and Sweden.

Study region: Southeastern Brazil, with emphasis on the Jaguari River basin, the main tributary of the Cantareira system. Study focus: We examined the basin hydroclimate variability, especially along the historical meteorological droughts between 2013 and 2021, and the hydrologic response to negative disturbances in rainfall. Field and satellite measurements of rainfall, flow, soil moisture, and water storage were used to assess the hydroclimate variability and to validate the hydrological model. Our hypothesis is that a good model performance on these validated variables improve our confidence in the representation of aquifer storage and recharge. We also estimated the long-term elasticity of flow to precipitation using the entire analysis period (27 years), and compared to the elasticity in along the serial droughts from 2017 to 2021. New hydrological insights for the region: Results show that the serial meteorological droughts were very likely unprecedented in the last 70 years, leading to hydrologic impacts over regional scale. We estimated a decrease of 6.4 mm y-1 in the soil moisture and a reduction of 26% in the aquifer recharge in the last 5 years of serial droughts. In the same period, the elasticity of flow to precipitation was 3.1, which greatly exceeded the long-term value of 2.0. This greater hydrologic sensitivity in the elasticity may represent that the resilience of the surface hydrologic system was transiently lost.

Losses in agricultural production, mainly caused by extreme temperature, rainfall and drought, have demanded the adaptation of the Brazilian agriculture to the ongoing climate change. This study aimed to evaluate, through an integrative review, the effects of agricultural practices established by two Brazilian public policies (ABC Plan and Planaveg) on the resilience and adaptation of the country’s agricultural systems, considering the effects on local climate and extreme events. All the Embrapa library collections were used as main sources, and the Google Scholar was used as a secondary source. The search included publications from 1998 to April 2022 and resulted in 334 data, extracted from 51 references, covering at least one factor and one practice. The review showed that the proposed practices may contribute to the resilience and adaptation of the Brazilian agricultural and forestry sectors to climate change in the main production regions. Studies have indicated that the incorporation of the arboreal component into production systems may provide an environment more resilient to droughts, increased air humidity, reduced temperature impact and reduced fire risks, among other benefits. The adoption of the ABC Plan and Planaveg practices by the agricultural sector is an option feasible, strategic and well-aligned with a low-carbon economy, while it increases the resilience to present and future climate change impacts.

Los productos derivados de la caña de azúcar (Saccharum officinarum L) conforman una de las agroindustrias rurales de mayor tradición en Colombia. Con el fin de establecer los principales indicadores y protocolos que permitan la caracterización bromatológica, fitoquímica y antioxidante de productos derivados de S. officinarum, se realizó un rastreo bibliográfico a través de la base documental del Icontec y Scopus, en el periodo comprendido entre enero de 1990 y febrero de 2021. Lo anterior, bajo lineamientos que permitieran establecer un panorama mundial sobre las tendencias de investigación y desarrollo, análisis de productos finales e identificación de los principales protocolos normalizados y no normalizados. Fue así como se lograron identificar las principales NTC (Normas Técnicas Colombianas) y los protocolos más empleados para la cuantificación de los indicadores fisicoquímicos y de algunos metabolitos de interés, confirmando y estableciendo sus efectos positivos para la salud animal y humana, como potenciador inmunológico, antitóxico, citoprotector, anticariógeno y antioxidante. Adicionalmente, se logró determinar que los metales pesados (plomo, mercurio, cadmio, arsénico), furfural, 5-hidroximetilfurfural y acrilamida son los principales contaminantes sobre los cuales se debe establecer una estrategia de mitigación. Con esto, se hace evidente la necesidad de generar una política nacional que posibilite cuantificar los indicadores fisicoquímicos exigidos, el contenido de compuestos bioactivos y la presencia de contaminantes peligrosos en los productos derivados de la caña de azúcar, con el fin de dar cumplimiento a la normativa legal para la distribución y comercialización de productos azucarados en el mercado nacional e internacional y, por qué no, iniciar su diversificación.

Projected food demand increases highlight the importance of Latin America as one of the big global future food suppliers, due to its agricultural potential, in particular regarding cattle farming. Despite the importance of the cattle sector for the region, its negative environmental impacts are numerous and the shift toward sustainability is perceived as slow and uncoordinated. This study aims at identifying successes and difficulties in the implementation of public policies for a sustainable cattle sector in Colombia, Argentina, and Costa Rica. Based on the review of scientific articles, government reports, and publications of international organizations, a qualitative comparative analysis was carried out, documenting the political developments between 2010 and 2020. Our findings suggest that public policies mainly focus on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the implementation of silvo-pastoral systems. Common successes exist among the three countries, e.g., a large number of public policies for promoting sustainable cattle farming or the inclusion of goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and implement silvo-pastoral systems, but they also coincide in difficulties, e.g., disconnection between policies and the lack of continuity of development programs. The efforts made with regional and national public policies, in addition to legislative advances, can be seen as initial steps in a long-term process toward sustainable cattle farming, and thus, recommendations are provided for increasing their success at different stages, from the identification of the problem to its evaluation, particularly in the face of financing difficulties, disconnection among policies and initiatives, and participation of citizens and livestock producers.

El presente artículo toma al debate académico como práctica central de enseñanza y de ejercicio democrático. En ese sentido, los objetivos del texto consisten en mostrar las principales implicaciones académicas, políticas y sociales que se siguen de la aplicación del debate. Este horizonte es vislumbrado desde una conjunción de métodos: revisión bibliográfica, focus group y lo que se ha denominado como creación y participación conjunta. La metodología aplicada permite postular una nueva concepción de debate que involucra, básicamente, dos aspectos. El primero está dirigido hacia una ampliación de la participación, pues, contraviniendo el modelo norteamericano, no se trata ya del enfrentamiento de dos grupos, sino de un encuentro para la discusión de una temática protagonizada por una variedad más amplia de grupos. El segundo postula una nueva concepción de debate grupal que entraña la participación activa en tres momentos diferenciables, iguales en importancia y necesarios para la existencia del debate.

Plants have mechanisms to perceive and transmit information between their organs and tissues to respond quickly to abiotic and biotic external stimuli from the environment, producing different electrical potential types. It is reported on the generation and conduction of electrochemical impulses within different tissues and organs of the plant, which have been acquired using different methods to use them in various applications in the improvement of the agro-industrial sector and the development of different types of phytosensors. In this review paper, the various studies that have been carried out since Pfeffer, Burdon-Sanderson, Darwin, Haberlandt, and Bose discovered electrical activity in plants until today are reported. Plants provide mechanisms to perform biosensors based on responding to environmental changes, opening a great path for the design of low-cost and highly sensitive sensors and sensor networks, the current trend is towards experimental analysis using various stimuli.

Background Global Asthma Network (GAN) was established in 2012 as a development to the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood to improve asthma care globally.Objective To survey asthma, allergic rhinitis and atopic dermatitis in primary and secondary school children and to investigate and evaluate its prevalence, severity, management and risk factors in Mexico.Methods GAN Phase I is a cross-sectional, multicentre survey carried out in 15 centres corresponding to 14 Mexican cities throughout 2016–2019 using the validated Spanish language version of the GAN Phase I questionnaires. The questionnaires were completed by parents of 6–7-year-old primary school pupils (school children) and by 13–14-year-old adolescents.Results A total of 35 780 school children and 41 399 adolescents participated. Wheezing ever prevalence was 26.2% (95% CI 25.8% to 26.7%) in school children and 23.9% (95% CI 23.4% to 24.3%) in adolescents. The corresponding frequencies for current wheeze were 10.2% (95% CI 9.9% to 10.5%) and 11.6% (95% CI 11.2% to 11.9%). In school children, the risk factors for current wheeze were rhinitis (OR 4.484; 95% CI 3.915% to 5.134%) and rash symptoms (OR 1.735; 95% CI 1.461% to 2.059%). For adolescents, rhinitis symptoms (OR 3.492; 95% CI 3.188% to 3.825%) and allergic rhinitis diagnosis (OR 2.144; 95% CI 1.787% to 2.572%) were the most significant. For both groups, there was a negative relation with centres’ sea level altitude higher than 1500 m above mean sea level (p

El artículo estudia la gestión de las materias primas para fabricar herramientas que, junto a la tecnología lítica y los asentamientos, permiten conocer las estrategias de subsistencias de comunidades arcaicas en el río Chucurí, Santander, Colombia. Se aplicaron técnicas fisicoquímicas (DRX) para valorar los atributos naturales de la materia primas y su expresión en las herramientas, con el propósito de ampliar las clasificaciones morfo-técnicas arqueológicas en el contexto de la tecnología lítica del Arcaico, y lograr una comprensión de la ubicación funcional de los asentamientos en un territorio y su relación con las materias primas. Se concluye que los sitios residenciales y las zonas de extracción de materias primas, en el marco del poblamiento y las estrategias económicas, están en concordancia con las estrategias de supervivencia material y social de estas comunidades, las cuales se centraron en la gestión de recursos locales.

Viruses, far from being just parasites affecting hosts’ fitness, are major players in any microbial ecosystem. In spite of their broad abundance, viruses, in particular bacteriophages, remain largely unknown since only about 20% of sequences obtained from viral community DNA surveys could be annotated by comparison with public databases. In order to shed some light into this genetic dark matter we expanded the search of orthologous groups as potential markers to viral taxonomy from bacteriophages and included eukaryotic viruses, establishing a set of 31,150 ViPhOGs (Eukaryotic Viruses and Phages Orthologous Groups). To do this, we examine the non-redundant viral diversity stored in public databases, predict proteins in genomes lacking such information, and used all annotated and predicted proteins to identify potential protein domains. The clustering of domains and unannotated regions into orthologous groups was done using cogSoft. Finally, we employed a random forest implementation to classify genomes into their taxonomy and found that the presence or absence of ViPhOGs is significantly associated with their taxonomy. Furthermore, we established a set of 1457 ViPhOGs that given their importance for the classification could be considered as markers or signatures for the different taxonomic groups defined by the ICTV at the order, family, and genus levels.

In the anesthetized cat the correlation between the ongoing cord dorsum potentials (CDPs) recorded from different lumbar spinal segments has a non-random structure, suggesting relatively stable patterns of functional connectivity between the dorsal horn neuronal ensembles involved in the generation of these potentials. During the nociception induced by the intradermic injection of capsaicin, the patterns of segmental correlation between the spontaneous CDPs acquire other non-random configurations that are temporarily reversed to their pre-capsaicin state by the systemic injection of lidocaine, a procedure known to decrease the manifestation of neuropathic pain in both animals and humans. We have now extended these studies and utilized machine learning for the automatic extraction and selection of particular classes of CDPs according to their shapes and amplitudes. By using a Markovian analysis, we disclosed the transitions between the different kinds of CDPs induced by capsaicin and lidocaine and constructed a global model based on the changes in the behavior of the CDPs generated along the whole set of lumbar segments. This allowed the identification of the different states of functional connectivity within the whole ensemble of dorsal horn neurones attained during nociception and their transitory reversal by systemic administration of lidocaine in preparations with the intact neuroaxis and after spinalization. The present observations provide additional information on the state of self-organized criticality that leads to the adaptive behavior of the dorsal horn neuronal networks during nociception and antinociception both shaped by supraspinal descending influences.

Este artículo aborda la incorporación de la pobreza multidimensional a la medición de la pobreza en Chile, el vínculo de la pobreza con la vulnerabilidad y la relevancia de incorporar los derechos humanos en las políticas sociales. Se establece la relación entre la vulneración de derechos, tanto civiles y políticos, como económicos, sociales y culturales, y sus efectos en las personas, con la experiencia de vivir en situación de pobreza. Se plantea asimismo, que esta experiencia debe ser urgentemente mirada desde las políticas sociales, como una situación que afecta la realización de necesidades humanas fundamentales, particularmente en las categorías existenciales del “ser” y “hacer” en lo social, por lo que se debe asegurar un núcleo básico de oportunidades y bienestar a través de garantías sociales.

Este artículo, es el resultado de una reflexión teórica y de los datos obtenidos en el proyecto arqueológico estudio del patrimonio arqueológico, paisajístico y geo- ambiental de la mesa de los santos. bases para proyectos de eco-desarrollo (código 5254). El proyecto se implementó en el 2012, en la vereda Los Teres, municipio de Los Santos, Santander, Colombia, el cual se desarrolló bajo el marco teórico de la arqueología del paisaje. De los resultados obtenidos, sólo tomamos la parte concerniente a los sitios de vivienda (asentamientos) y el arreglo de éstos en el paisaje, con el propósito de comprender la distribución espacial de los asentamientos, en el contexto territorial y, con ello, comprender su estructura física edificada del asentamiento, como fuente primigenia para lograr un acercamiento al tema urbano desde la fuente documental prehispánica.

This work reports the development of GenSeed-HMM, a program that implements seed-driven progressive assembly, an approach to reconstruct specific sequences from unassembled data, starting from short nucleotide or protein seed sequences or profile Hidden Markov Models (HMM). The program can use any one of a number of sequence assemblers. Assembly is performed in multiple steps and relatively few reads are used in each cycle, consequently the program demands low computational resources. As a proof-of-concept and to demonstrate the power of HMM-driven progressive assemblies, GenSeed-HMM was applied to metagenomic datasets in the search for diverse ssDNA bacteriophages from the recently described Alpavirinae subfamily. Profile HMMs were built using Alpavirinae-specific regions from multiple sequence alignments using either the viral protein 1 (VP1) (major capsid protein) or VP4 (genome replication initiation protein). These profile HMMs were used by GenSeed-HMM (running Newbler assembler) as seeds to reconstruct viral genomes from sequencing datasets of human fecal samples. All contigs obtained were annotated and taxonomically classified using similarity searches and phylogenetic analyses. The most specific profile HMM seed enabled the reconstruction of 45 partial or complete Alpavirinae genomic sequences. A comparison with conventional (global) assembly of the same original dataset, using Newbler in a standalone execution, revealed that GenSeed-HMM outperformed global genomic assembly in several metrics employed. This approach is capable of detecting organisms that have not been used in the construction of the profile HMM, which opens up the possibility of diagnosing novel viruses, without previous specific information, constituting a de novo diagnosis. Additional applications include, but are not limited to, the specific assembly of extrachromosomal elements such as plastid and mitochondrial genomes from metagenomic data. Profile HMM seeds can also be used to reconstruct specific protein coding genes for gene diversity studies, and to determine all possible gene variants present in a metagenomic sample. Such surveys could be useful to detect the emergence of drug-resistance variants in sensitive environments such as hospitals and animal production facilities, where antibiotics are regularly used. Finally, GenSeed-HMM can be used as an adjunct for gap closure on assembly finishing projects, by using multiple contig ends as anchored seeds.