Managua Relief

The Miami News. Mon., March 19, 1973. Managuan Relief. Miami News Staff Photo by George Kochaniec. Raymond and Connie Schultz with toys. (Back) "Focuses on kids" article On December 23, 12:29 a.m. local time in Managua, Nicaragua, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake occurred. The earth caused widespread damage among Managua, the capital city. In Managua, 5,000 residents were killed, 20,000 were injured and over 250,000 were left homeless. In Miami, residents and relief organizations focused on helping children. Wife of General Arturo Somoza pleaded on efforts on gathering sporting goods and toys for Managua’s young people. Relief committees purchased 230 dozen balls – basketball, rubber, and volley, soccer, and others. Nearly $500 came from students in Hialeah High School. Jump ropes and jacks were donated from a sorority at Florida International University. Arrangements were made to bring 44,000 pounds of baby formula and canned meat and 13,000 pounds of medicine. Many of Miami’s corporations, associations, and residents contributed to the Managuan Relief effort. Source: The Miami News, March 19, 1973 by Lynn Feigenbaum

The Beacon, April 10, 2006

Vol. 18, Issue 58, 12 pages

Tree Islands in Everglades Landscapes: Current Status, Historical Changes, and Hydrologic Impacts on Population Dynamics and Moisture Relations, First Annual Report

In 2005 we initiated a project designed to better understand tree island structure and function in the Everglades and the wetlands bordering it. Focus was on the raised portions at the upstream end of the islands, where tropical hardwood species adapted to well-drained conditions usually are the most prominent component of the vegetation. The study design is hierarchical, with four levels; in general, a large number of sites is to be surveyed once for a limited set of parameters, and increasingly small sets of islands are to be sampled more intensively, more frequently, and for more aspects of ecosystem function. During the first year of the 3-year study, we completed surveys of 41 Level 1 (i.e., the least intensive level) islands, and established permanent plots in two and three islands of Levels 2 and 4 intensity, respectively. Tree species richness and structural complexity was highest in Shark Slough “hammocks”, while islands in Northeast Shark Slough and Water Conservation Area 3B, which receive heavy human use, were simpler, more park-like communities. Initial monitoring of soil moisture in Level 4 hammocks indicated considerable local variation, presumably associated with antecedent rainfall and current water levels in the adjacent marsh. Tree islands throughout the study area were impacted significantly by Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma in 2005, but appear to be recovering rapidly. As the project continues to include more islands and repeated measurements, we expect to develop a better grasp of tree island dynamics across the Everglades ecosystem, especially with respect to moisture relations and water levels in the adjacent marsh. The detailed progress report which follows is also available online at http://www.fiu.edu/~serp1/projects/treeislands/tree_islands_2005_annual_report.pd

A Minimal History of the Cuban Revolution (Historia mínima de Ia Revolución Cubana), Book Presentation by Author Rafael Rojas

This flyer promotes the event "A Minimal History of the Cuban Revolution (Historia mínima de Ia Revolución Cubana), Book Presentation by Author Rafael Rojas", part at the SIPA at Books & Books series. This event held at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

The Fullness of time

THE FULLNESS OF TIME is a novel about the quest for identity that transcends the limitations of moral duty, social status, and cultural conventions. Set in Tarpon Springs, Florida, in 1969, it is the story of Victor Lucas, a young Greek immigrant forced to go to war in Vietnam in another man's place in order to save the woman he loves. He must survive the war to return and reclaim his love and his rightful place in society. Based on the archetypal hero's quest as articulated by Joseph Campbell, the narrative is told from the limited third-person perspective of the main character. Though the journey is particular to Tarpon Springs in the 1960s, it echoes the human struggle and triumph in the wanderings of Ulysses. The novel's influences include Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, but is also thematically related to contemporary works exploring cultural turbulence and upheaval.

Essays on Risk Aversion, Diversification and Non-Participation

My dissertation consists of three essays. The central theme of these essays is the psychological factors and biases that affect the portfolio allocation decision. The first essay entitled, “Are women more risk-averse than men?” examines the gender difference in risk aversion as revealed by actual investment choices. Using a sample that controls for biases in the level of education and finance knowledge, there is evidence that when individuals have the same level of education, irrespective of their knowledge of finance, women are no more risk-averse than their male counterparts. However, the gender-risk aversion relation is also a function of age, income, wealth, marital status, race/ethnicity and the number of children in the household. The second essay entitled, “Can diversification be learned?” investigates if investors who have superior investment knowledge are more likely to actively seek diversification benefits and are less prone to allocation biases. Results of cross-sectional analyses suggest that knowledge of finance increases the likelihood that an investor will efficiently allocate his direct investments across the major asset classes; invest in foreign assets; and hold a diversified equity portfolio. However, there is no evidence that investors who are more financially sophisticated make superior allocation decisions in their retirement savings. The final essay entitled, “The demographics of non-participation”, examines the factors that affect the decision not to hold stocks. The results of probit regression models indicate that when individuals are highly educated, the decision to not participate in the stock market is less related to demographic factors. In particular, when individuals have attained at least a college degree and have advanced knowledge of finance, they are significantly more likely to invest in equities either directly or indirectly through mutual funds or their retirement savings. There is also evidence that the decision not to hold stocks is motivated by short-term market expectations and the most recent investment experience. The findings of these essays should increase the body of research that seeks to reconcile what investors actually do (positive theory) with what traditional theories of finance predict that investors should do (normative theory).

Water Governance in Haiti: An Assessment of Laws and Institutional Capacities

The Republic of Haiti struggles to sustainably manage its water resources. Public health is compromised by low levels of water supply, sanitation, and hygiene, and water resources are often contaminated and unsustainably allocated. While poor governance is often blamed for these shortcomings, the laws and institutions regulating water resources in Haiti are poorly understood, especially by the international community. This study brings together and analyzes Haitian water laws, assesses institutional capacities, and provides a case study of water management in northern Haiti in order to provide a more complete picture of the sector. Funded by the Inter-American Development Bank as part of the Water Availability, Quality and Integrated Water Resources Management in Northern Haiti (HA-T1179) Project, this study took place from January-July 2015, with the help of local experts and participating stakeholders. The results indicate that Haiti’s water law framework is highly fragmented, with overlapping mandates and little coordination between ministries at the national level, and ambiguous but unrealistic roles for subnational governments. A capacity assessment of institutions in northern Haiti illustrates that while local stakeholders are engaged, human and financial resources are insufficient to carry out statutory responsibilities. The findings suggest that water resources management planning should engage local governments and community fixtures while supplementing capacities with national or international support.

Global compilation of benthic data sets I

Approaches to quantify the organic carbon accumulation on a global scale generally do not consider the small-scale variability of sedimentary and oceanographic boundary conditions along continental margins. In this study, we present a new approach to regionalize the total organic carbon (TOC) content in surface sediments (<5 cm sediment depth). It is based on a compilation of more than 5500 single measurements from various sources. Global TOC distribution was determined by the application of a combined qualitative and quantitative-geostatistical method. Overall, 33 benthic TOC-based provinces were defined and used to process the global distribution pattern of the TOC content in surface sediments in a 1°x1° grid resolution. Regional dependencies of data points within each single province are expressed by modeled semi-variograms. Measured and estimated TOC values show good correlation, emphasizing the reasonable applicability of the method. The accumulation of organic carbon in marine surface sediments is a key parameter in the control of mineralization processes and the material exchange between the sediment and the ocean water. Our approach will help to improve global budgets of nutrient and carbon cycles.

Data compilation on the biological response to ocean acidification: environmental and experimental context of data sets and related literature

The exponential growth of studies on the biological response to ocean acidification over the last few decades has generated a large amount of data. To facilitate data comparison, a data compilation hosted at the data publisher PANGAEA was initiated in 2008 and is updated on a regular basis (doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.149999). By January 2015, a total of 581 data sets (over 4 000 000 data points) from 539 papers had been archived. Here we present the developments of this data compilation five years since its first description by Nisumaa et al. (2010). Most of study sites from which data archived are still in the Northern Hemisphere and the number of archived data from studies from the Southern Hemisphere and polar oceans are still relatively low. Data from 60 studies that investigated the response of a mix of organisms or natural communities were all added after 2010, indicating a welcomed shift from the study of individual organisms to communities and ecosystems. The initial imbalance of considerably more data archived on calcification and primary production than on other processes has improved. There is also a clear tendency towards more data archived from multifactorial studies after 2010. For easier and more effective access to ocean acidification data, the ocean acidification community is strongly encouraged to contribute to the data archiving effort, and help develop standard vocabularies describing the variables and define best practices for archiving ocean acidification data.

The UK waste input–output table: Linking waste generation to the UK economy

Peer reviewed

The UK waste input–output table : Linking waste generation to the UK economy

Peer reviewed

A influência da internet no marketing internacional e relacional das empresas

O presente relatório tem por base o estágio curricular realizado no âmbito do mestrado em Marketing Relacional, lecionado na Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão do Instituto Politécnico de Leiria. O estágio, com uma duração de 1096 horas, decorreu na empresa Smartidiom, Lda., cuja atividade principal é a prestação de serviços linguísticos. A Smartidiom, Lda. opera no mercado internacional desde a sua fundação e pode ser definida como uma empresa born-global. No entanto, o reforço da internacionalização afigura-se indispensável para uma empresa que pretende expandir a atividade e se confronta com um mercado nacional exíguo, como é o mercado português, que atravessa um período de modesto dinamismo económico. O reforço da internacionalização é também uma ambição natural numa economia global, baseada no conhecimento. As tarefas realizadas contribuíram para este objetivo de intensificação da internacionalização e incluíram aspetos relacionados com o marketing internacional, como a elaboração do plano de marketing internacional da empresa e com o marketing relacional, como, o contacto com clientes através da rede social de âmbito profissional, o LinkedIn. Dado o âmbito do mestrado e as tarefas desempenhadas, era importante analisar o papel da internet no marketing internacional e na construção de estratégias relacionais com clientes estrangeiros. Com este intuito foi realizada uma revisão da literatura, que permitiu concluir que o uso da internet nas atividades de marketing internacional é particularmente importante para as pequenas empresas, dada a escassez de recursos disponíveis. As características internas das empresas, como o domínio das tecnologias da informação, condicionam o uso desta ferramenta. A literatura mostra que as empresas reconhecem a importância das redes sociais na construção dos relacionamentos com os clientes. No entanto, a utilização destas no contexto específico do marketing internacional carece de análise empírica.

Salmeterol enhances the cardiac response to gene therapy in Pompe disease.

Enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) with recombinant human (rh) acid α-glucosidase (GAA) has prolonged the survival of patients. However, the paucity of cation-independent mannose-6-phosphate receptor (CI-MPR) in skeletal muscle, where it is needed to take up rhGAA, correlated with a poor response to ERT by muscle in Pompe disease. Clenbuterol, a selective β2 receptor agonist, enhanced the CI-MPR expression in striated muscle through Igf-1 mediated muscle hypertrophy, which correlated with increased CI-MPR (also the Igf-2 receptor) expression. In this study we have evaluated 4 new drugs in GAA knockout (KO) mice in combination with an adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector encoding human GAA, 3 alternative β2 agonists and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Mice were injected with AAV2/9-CBhGAA (1E+11 vector particles) at a dose that was not effective at clearing glycogen storage from the heart. Heart GAA activity was significantly increased by either salmeterol (p<0.01) or DHEA (p<0.05), in comparison with untreated mice. Furthermore, glycogen content was reduced in the heart by treatment with DHEA (p<0.001), salmeterol (p<0.05), formoterol (p<0.01), or clenbuterol (p<0.01) in combination with the AAV vector, in comparison with untreated GAA-KO mice. Wirehang testing revealed that salmeterol and the AAV vector significantly increased performance, in comparison with the AAV vector alone (p<0.001). Similarly, salmeterol with the vector increased performance significantly more than any of the other drugs. The most effective individual drugs had no significant effect in absence of vector, in comparison with untreated mice. Thus, salmeterol should be further developed as adjunctive therapy in combination with either ERT or gene therapy for Pompe disease.

From the Cover: Arsenite Uncouples Mitochondrial Respiration and Induces a Warburg-like Effect in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Millions of people worldwide are chronically exposed to arsenic through contaminated drinking water. Despite decades of research studying the carcinogenic potential of arsenic, the mechanisms by which arsenic causes cancer and other diseases remain poorly understood. Mitochondria appear to be an important target of arsenic toxicity. The trivalent arsenical, arsenite, can induce mitochondrial reactive oxygen species production, inhibit enzymes involved in energy metabolism, and induce aerobic glycolysis in vitro, suggesting that metabolic dysfunction may be important in arsenic-induced disease. Here, using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans and a novel metabolic inhibition assay, we report an in vivo induction of aerobic glycolysis following arsenite exposure. Furthermore, arsenite exposure induced severe mitochondrial dysfunction, including altered pyruvate metabolism; reduced steady-state ATP levels, ATP-linked respiration and spare respiratory capacity; and increased proton leak. We also found evidence that induction of autophagy is an important protective response to arsenite exposure. Because these results demonstrate that mitochondria are an important in vivo target of arsenite toxicity, we hypothesized that deficiencies in mitochondrial electron transport chain genes, which cause mitochondrial disease in humans, would sensitize nematodes to arsenite. In agreement with this, nematodes deficient in electron transport chain complexes I, II, and III, but not ATP synthase, were sensitive to arsenite exposure, thus identifying a novel class of gene-environment interactions that warrant further investigation in the human populace.