At the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) 2000 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, Margarita Coloma Pinos (FUNDACYT, Ecuador) co-presented five posters and four scientific paper abstracts. The presentations primarily focused on the post-surgery effects of different types and regimens of anesthesia administration. Coloma is pursuing her master’s in anesthesiology in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Management at the Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
Benedito Rodrigues Dos Santos (Kellogg, Brazil) gave a lecture at Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) entitled “Street Children in Contemporary Brazil: Social Mobilization, Education, and Public Policy.” It was part of a DRCLAS lecture series on democratization and social movements in Brazil. The lecture was based on Dos Santos’s academic and activist work with street children over more than two decades. He is pursuing a doctorate in anthropology at the Univ. of California, Berkeley.
Carlos Fredy Ochoa García (Fulbright, Guatemala) presented his paper, “K’iche’-Maya Concepts of Conflict, ” at two conferences in 2000. The paper addresses historic means of conflict resolution among the K’iche’-Maya, one of the indigenous tribes of Guatemala. His first presentation was in October at the annual conference of the North Central Council of Latin Americanists (NCCLA), held at the Univ. of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He gave his second presentation in December in Manila, Philippines, at the International Conference on Conflict Resolution, Peace Building, Sustainable Development, and Indigenous People. Ochoa is pursuing a master’s degree in anthropology at the Univ. of Connecticut at Storrs.
In March 2001, Cleonice Puggian (Fulbright/Turner, Brazil) presented a paper at the Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum, “Situating Literacies and Learning,” at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. Puggian’s paper was entitled “Metacognitive Strategies in Computers: How Can Technology Help Juvenile Delinquents to Acquire Writing and Reading Skills?” After conducting short-term research at the Educational Technology Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she began a six-month training program at Turner Learning in Atlanta, Georgia, in April 2001.
At Aquaculture 2001, an international conference of aquaculture organizations held in January in Orlando, Florida, Lesber Salazar Antón (Fulbright, Nicaragua) presented his paper “Effect of Chronic Taura Syndrome Virus (TSV) Infections on Survival of the Shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei Exposed to Salinity Stress.” Litopenaeus vannamei are commonly known as Pacific white shrimp and can be found along the muddy bottom of the Pacific shoreline stretching from Mexico to Peru. Salazar is pursuing a master’s degree in marine science at the College of Marine Sciences at the Univ. of Southern Mississippi in Ocean Springs.
Fabiola Soto Salom (FUNDAYACUCHO, Venezuela) has been invited to join the Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars, a national organization that recognizes scholarly achievement in university students, faculty, and staff who are studying outside their own countries or otherwise engaged in international endeavors. Soto is pursuing a master’s in business administration and management at the Univ. of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Colombian Edgar Díaz-Puentes (USAID, M.S., 1974, biochemistry and biophysics, Univ. of Vermont) has been named a member of the Consejo Nacional de Acreditación, an agency of the Ministerio de Educación Nacional. The goal of the council is to ensure that educational institutions in Colombia adhere to specific levels of quality and achieve established goals.
Bolivian Volga Iñíguez Rojas (Fulbright, Ph.D., 2000, molecular biology, Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison) has completed her Ph.D. studies in the laboratory of Judd M. Aiken in the Animal Health and Biomedical Sciences Department at the Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison. During Iñíguez’s studies, she co-authored an article, “Strain-Specific Propagation of PrPSc Properties into Baculovirus-Expressed Hamster PrPC” (with J. Aiken, D. McKenzie, and J. Mirwald), that was published in the Journal of General Virology (2000), 81. Iñíguez’s work on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in Aiken’s laboratory laid the groundwork for her current research on the molecular diagnosis of diarrheal diseases, which are the primary cause of mortality for children in Bolivia. Iñíguez is conducting her research at the Univ. Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz. Aiken will continue his collaboration with Iñíguez from his laboratory in Wisconsin.
William Noe Rodríguez Ramírez 1967–2001
I join my LASPAU and Fulbright colleagues in expressing sorrow for the deaths of Fulbright grantee William Noe Rodríguez Ramírez, his wife Renata, and their baby daughter Mariana in the terrible earthquake that struck El Salvador on January 13, 2001. I was William’s program advisor at LASPAU throughout his two-year master’s degree program in Teaching English as a Second Language at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. William had returned to the Universidad de El Salvador in August 2000 with many plans for his future professional work, and I know that his enthusiasm and sense of humor will be sorely missed by his university colleagues.
—Renee M. Hahn |
Ecuadorian Marcos Sánchez Plata (FUNDACYT, M.S., 2000, food science and technology, Univ. of Nebraska–Lincoln) co-coordinated a new internship program, Academic Cooperative Program in Food Science and Technology, which enables two students from the Univ. Central del Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador, and two from the Corporación Universitaria Lasallista in Medellín, Colombia, to study and conduct research at the Department of Food Science and Technology at the Univ. of Nebraska–Lincoln. The program is intended to foster an ongoing educational exchange between the food science departments of the three universities with the hope of enhancing participants’ scientific knowledge and technological skills.
“Modern Estimation of the Parameters of Weibull Wind Speed Distribution for Wind Energy Analysis,” a paper co-authored (with T. Lambert) by Venezuelan Jean Vittorio Seguro Martins (FUNDAYACUCHO, Ph.D., 2000, mechanical engineering, Colorado State Univ.) was published in the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics (2000), 85. Weibull distribution is a measurement of the variation in wind speed for a particular area. In windy areas, turbines can be used to convert wind into a renewable source of electricity.
In November 2000, Ecuadorian Ernesto Valenzuela Domínguez (Fulbright, M.A., 2000, agribusiness economics, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale) presented a paper entitled “Gravity Model Application to Estimate Interregional Trade” (with W. Peterson and R. Beck) at the 47th North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) in Chicago, Illinois.
In September 2000, Colombian Fernando E. Vergara (USAID, M.S., 1975, Fulbright, short-term research, 1992, educational technology, Univ. of Delaware) was named commissioner for the Comisión Nacional de Televisión, an organization responsible for television policy and regulation in Colombia. Within the institution, he leads the spectrum management project, supports technological development of the sector, and strives to create awareness of the industry’s responsibility for quality content.
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