In October 2002, Juan José Alava (Fulbright, Ecuador) co-presented a poster at the American Cetacean Society’s 8th International Conference in Seattle, Washington. Alava, a master’s degree candidate in wildlife management at the Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, and his colleagues (M. J. Barragan, C. Castro, and R. Carvajal) presented “A Note Concerning the Newest Strandings of the Humpback Whale Related to the Bycatch in Ecuador.” Bycatching, the fishing industry’s term for the accidental capture or fatal entanglement of nontarget species, is generally considered to be the biggest threat to cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) worldwide.
Magnolia Ariza Nieto (Fulbright-COLCIENCIAS-DNP, Colombia), a doctoral candidate in cellular and molecular biology at the Univ. of Arkansas, Fayetteville, presented a poster entitled “Site-Specific Integration of Transgenes in Rice” (with V. Srivastava) at the annual meeting of the Southern Branch of the American Society of Agronomy in February 2003 in Mobile, Alabama. A transgene is a gene that is artificially inserted into a plant in order to improve or enhance some aspect of the plant, such as size or disease resistance.
In November 2002, Pablo Benavides (COLCIENCIAS, Colombia), a doctoral candiate in entomology at Perdue Univ., won the President’s Prize and a first place student prize for his research presentation, “Biodiversity and biogeography of the coffee berry borer, Hypothenemus hampe,” at the 2002 Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Benavides and his colleagues, J. Stuart, F.E. Vega, J. Romero-Severson, and A. Bustillo, estimated the genetic diversity of the coffee berry borer using data collected from sixteen countries in three continents and constructed possible models of the insect’s worldwide dispersion. The berry borer is a highly destructive pest, infesting millions of acres of coffee crops worldwide every year.
Néstor Correa Pulice (OAS, Panama) was one of the organizers of the 5th Environmental Festival of the Parque Natural Metropolitano, an annual event intended to promote the protection of natural resources. Located within Panama City, the Parque Natural Metropolitano is the only protected tropical forest in an urban area in the Americas. The 2002 festival, which took place on April 22 (Earth Day), included exhibits on ecology, wildlife, recycling, clean energy, and earth pollution, as well as other educational and cultural events. At the November 2002 National Interpreters Workshop, Correa received an Interpretive Media Competition award for his work on the festival. The workshop is an annual event of the National Association for Interpretation, a professional group dedicated to education programs at parks, museums, and similar sites. Correa is a pursuing a master’s degree in ecology at Southern Illinois Univ. Carbondale.
In 2002, an article by Roberto Domínguez Rivera (OAS, Mexico) entitled “Reajustando las Estratégias del Proyecto Heredado: una Evaluación de la Política de Vicente Fox” was published in La Política Exterior de México bajo un Gobierno Democrático, a book of essays discussing current trends in Mexico’s foreign policy. A revised version of the article was presented in February 2003 in Portland, Oregon, at the 44th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association. Domínguez is a doctoral candidate in the Department of International Studies at the Univ. of Miami.
Pablo Jarrín Valladares (Fulbright/Amazon Basin, Ecuador), a master’s degree candidate in biology at Boston Univ., published two papers in 2002. “A new species of spiny pocket mouse (Heteromyidae: Heteromys) endemic to western Ecuador” (with R. P. Anderson) was published in American Museum Novitates and “Flower visitation by bats in cloud forests of western Ecuador” (with N. Muchhala) was published in Biotropica. Earlier in the year, Jarrín lead a team of researchers from Boston Univ.. and from his home institution, Pontificia Univ. Católica del Ecuador, on a field study of remnant forests in the northern Andes. They evaluated the bat genus Sturnira, a yellow-shouldered bat whose distribution often serves as an important indicator of forest fragmentation in tropical regions.
João Kulcsar, Jr. (Fulbright, Brazil), a visiting scholar with Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, co-coordinated the First Brazil Week at Harvard, which took place in April 2003. The event brought together scholars, leaders, and members of the local Brazilian community to discuss and celebrate the Brazilian immigrant experience in New England.
Two articles by Paola Premuda Conti (Fulbright, Uruguay) were accepted for publication in scientific journals in 2002. “Development and initial provision of intensive social skills and work readiness training for adults with traumatic brain injury: Possibilities of replication in Argentina and Uruguay” (with T. Upton and J. Bordieri) will be published in Revista Neurológica Argentina. “Comparing brain injury rehabilitation practices: What can North and South Americans learn from each other?” (with T. Upton, L. Fontan, J. Lorenzo, and N. Quinteros ) was published in The Journal of Rehabilitation. Premuda is pursuing a master’s degree in rehabilitation at Southern Illinois Univ. Carbondale.
In 2001, Venezuelan Luisa Elena Bentacourt (Fulbright, M.F.A., 1992, painting, Washington State Univ.) founded a contemporary arts center, the Fundación Multidisciplinaria de Arte Contemporáneo (CEMAC) in Valencia. CEMAC offers seminars and workshops in postmodern art led by prominent specialists. Betancourt teaches two seminars at the center: “Postmodernism and the Visual Arts” and “Women and the Power of Their Art.” Through support from the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura, CEMAC has been able to extend its opportunities and services to members of the art community who would otherwise be unable to participate.
Since returning to his home country of Brazil, Décio Torres Cruz (Fulbright, Ph.D., 1997, comparative literature, Univ. at Buffalo) has been conducting research at the Univ. Federal da Bahia (UFBA) and the Univ. do Estado da Bahia (UNEB) in the fields of literature and English language. In 2001, Cruz co-authored (with A. Silva and M. Rosas) Inglês.com.textos para informática, a book on English reading strategies for Brazilian computer science students that is currently being used in many schools throughout Brazil. Cruz also established a research group at UFBA in cultural studies and comparative literature of English-speaking peoples.
Colombian Freddy Humberto Escobar (COLCIENCIAS, Ph.D., 2002, petroleum engineering, Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman) traveled to Anchorage, Alaska, in May 2002 for the Joint Meeting of the Pacific Section of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the Western Region Society of Petroleum Engineers. Escobar presented his research at the conference and published five papers in the conference proceedings, including “Pressure Behavior of a Well in an Anisotropic Reservoir Near a No-Flow Boundary” (with B. Guira and D. Tiab) and “Effect of Mobility Ratio on the Pressure and Pressure-Derivative Behaviors of Wells in Closed Composite Reservoirs” (with R. Boussalem and D. Tiab). In addition, Escobar presented his work at the October 2002 Society of Petroleum Engineers Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, and published two papers in the conference proceedings.
Ana María Majano (Fulbright, M.A., 1991, Ph.D., 1993, economics, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville) was recently named executive director of the Centro Latinoamericano para la Competitividad y el Desarrollo Sostenible (CLACDS) at INCAE, one of Latin America’s leading business schools. CLACDS is financed with resources from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration and the AVINA Foundation, as well as from the Central American private sector. Prior to accepting the position at CLACDS, Majano served as minister for the environment in her home country, El Salvador.
In December 2001, Argentine Gustavo Eduardo Monte (Fulbright, M.S., 1992, electrical engineering, Stony Brook Univ.) and his colleagues in the Asociación Argentina de Tecnología Espacial (AATE) watched as their scientific experiments were launched into space on board the Space Shuttle Endeavor. The AATE, a consortium of Argentinean universities and private, non-profit research institutes, worked on the Paquete Argentino de Experimentos en el Espacio (PADE) project from 1997 to 2002. The project marked the first time the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent experiments from Latin American institutions into space. Monte’s university, the Univ. Nacional del Comahue, contributed experiments that tested the transportation of fluids in non-circular tubing, the surface vibration of water, the migration of drops and bubbles in microgravity, and the geophysical movement of fluids. Monte designed the onboard computers controlling the experiments and traveled to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to assist with project preparations.
A thesis-based paper by Argentine Alberto Pilati (Fulbright, M.S., 2000, ecology, Utah State Univ.) entitled “Importance of zooplankton for the persistence of a deep chlorophyll layer: A limnocorral experiment” (with W. Wurtsbaugh) was published in Limnology and Oceanography (January 2003). Pilati’s thesis research used large underwater plastic enclosures (limnocorrals), both with and without zooplankton, to study how zooplankton affect algal distribution through grazing and sedimentation processes in the Yellow Belly Lake in central Idaho. Pilati is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in zoology at Miami Univ. in Ohio.
At the Fall 2002 meeting of the American Musicological Society (Midwest Chapter) in Chicago, Argentine Edgardo Raul Salinas (Fulbright, M.M., 2001, piano performance, Bowling Green State Univ.) presented his paper “The Problem of Form in Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht: Towards an Epistemology of the Creative Process.” Salinas is pursuing a second master’s degree in music history at Bowling Green State Univ. His thesis analyzes John Cage’s orchestral work Atlas Eclipticalis and its critical reception.
|
