Coastal drowning in Costa Rica: incident analysis and comparisons between Costa Rican nationals and foreigners

Jennifer M. Piscopo examines how the crisis of representation in Costa Rica has placed a ceiling on gender equality in representation. The restructuring of the Costa Rican party system and party fragmentation has made electing multiple candidates from any one ballot more difficult. Top spots have become even more prestigious and more likely to be allocated to men, which reduces women’s electoral chances. Corruption scandals, party breakdown, citizen frustration, and economic problems tainted the administration of the nation’s first female president, Laura Chinchilla. Female legislators have often worked to promote women’s issues and feminist policies, but Chinchilla eschewed feminism, even though several of her policies did benefit women. Overall, her failed presidency may create difficulties for other women seeking top political offices and could have negative consequences for views of women in politics. These challenges notwithstanding, Piscopo concludes that Costa Rica remains at the vanguard of women’s political representation in Latin America.

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Formación docente inicial y acción socioeducativa: Construyendo una propuesta de implementación del Programa Maestros Comunitarios (PMC)

Revista Electrónica Educare ◽

10.15359/ree.22-1.19 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 1

Author(s):

Paulette Barberousse-Alfonso ◽

Marie Claire Vargas-Dengo ◽

Pamela Corrales-Bastos

Keyword(s):

Costa Rica ◽

Elementary Education ◽

Costa Rican ◽

School Dropouts ◽

Educational Models ◽

Code Number ◽

National University ◽

Community Pedagogy ◽

Transformative Approach ◽

Career Program

From a critical and transformative approach, this essay presents inputs and relevant conclusions obtained during the first stage of the project Construyendo una propuesta de implementación del Programa Maestros Comunitarios (PMC), Code number 0166-15 DEB-UNA (UNA, DEB, s. f.), conducted in 2016. Considering our perspective as researchers and professors at División de Educación Básica, the paper addresses a current topic within the socio-educative field to face challenges of contemporary educational models in formal and non-formal areas of elementary education in the Costa Rican context. Our purpose is that students and teachers of the career program Pedagogía con énfasis en I y II ciclos de la Educación General Básica have an overview of the national, social, and educational reality in an attempt to involve them in applying pedagogical actions towards finding a solution to school dropouts at Escuela Finca Guararí, Heredia, Costa Rica. The essay describes the experience of teaching education students and their socio-educational action with the focus on the systematization of the experience in the initial stage of the project. Furthermore, the paper connects with emerging strategic knowledge areas at División de Educación Básica (DEB), such as social and community pedagogy in the context of the National University (UNA) of Costa Rica. It takes over a route already traced at DEB, which proposes more flexible and alternative pedagogic formats to promote educational equity and diversity issues. The paper describes the project background and a theoretical framework, as well as aspects that have been shared by the protagonist actors along the process: students-teachers, host teachers, supervisor professors, school children, and their parents at Escuela Finca Guararí. Conclusions address main results and facts during 2016 in order to show the viability of the project, which is conducted from a public university. Finally, the article also includes an overview of the project’s future in terms of its implementation in the Costa Rican context.

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Costa Rica in 1948: Cold War or Local War?

The Americas A Quarterly Review of Latin American History ◽

10.2307/1008474 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 52 (4) ◽

pp. 465-493 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Marcia Olander

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

Cold War ◽

Costa Rica ◽

Critical Role ◽

Costa Rican ◽

Panama Canal Zone ◽

First Case ◽

The Government ◽

The Cold War ◽

The U.S

The years following World War Two produced a strong resurgence of U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean couched in Cold War terms. Although the U.S. intervention in Guatemala to overthrow the government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 has generally been seen as the first case of Cold War covert anti-Communist intervention in Latin America, several scholars have raised questions about U.S. involvement in a 1948 Costa Rican civil war in which Communism played a critical role. In a 1993 article in The Americas, Kyle Longley argued that “the U.S. response to the Costa Rican Revolution of 1948, not the Guatemalan affair, marked the origins of the Cold War in Latin America.” The U.S. “actively interfered,” and achieved “comparable results in Costa Rica as in Guatemala: the removal of a perceived Communist threat.” Other authors have argued, even, that the U.S. had prepared an invasion force in the Panama Canal Zone to pacify the country. The fifty years of Cold War anti-Communism entitles one to be skeptical of U.S. non-intervention in a Central American conflict involving Communism. Costa Ricans, aware of a long tradition of U.S. intervention in the region, also assumed that the U.S. would intervene. Most, if not all, were expecting intervention and one key government figure described U.S. pressure as like “the air, which is felt, even if it cannot be seen.” Yet, historians must do more than just “feel” intervention. Subsequent Cold War intervention may make it difficult to appraise the 1948 events in Costa Rica objectively. Statements like Longley's that “it is hard to believe that in early 1948 … Washington would not favor policies that ensured the removal of the [Communist Party] Vanguard,” although logical, do not coincide with the facts of the U.S. role in the conflict.

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Vaccine effectiveness of Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca to prevent severe COVID-19 in Costa Rica: A nationwide, observational study of hospitalizations prevalence (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.35054 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Luis Rosero-Bixby

Keyword(s):

Single Dose ◽

Costa Rica ◽

Observational Study ◽

Real World ◽

Vaccine Coverage ◽

Secondary Analysis ◽

Vaccine Effectiveness ◽

Costa Rican ◽

Vaccination Program ◽

Severe Illness

BACKGROUND The Costa Rican vaccination program uses Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. Real-world estimates of these vaccines effectiveness to prevent hospitalizations range from 90% to 98% for two doses and from 70% to 91% for a single dose. Almost all of these estimates predate the Delta variant. OBJECTIVE To estimate the dose-dependent effectiveness of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines to prevent severe illness in real-world conditions of Costa Rica, after the Delta variant became dominant. METHODS This observational study is a secondary analysis of hospitalizations prevalence. The participants are all 3.67 million adults residents in Costa Rica by mid-2021. The study is based on public aggregated data of 5978 COVID-19-related hospital records from 14th September to 20th October, 2021 and 6.1 million vaccination doses administered to determine hospitalization prevalence by dose-specific vaccination status. The intervention retrospectively evaluated is vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech (78%) and Oxford-AstraZeneca (22%). The main outcome studied is being hospitalized. RESULTS Vaccine effectiveness to prevent hospitalization (VEH) was estimated as 93.4% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 93.0 to 93.9) for complete vaccination and 76.7% (CI: 75.0 to 78.3) for single-dose vaccination among adults of all ages. VEH was lower and more uncertain among older adults aged 58 years and above: 92% (CI: 91% to 93%) for those who had received full vaccination and 64% (CI: 58% to 69%) for those who had received partial vaccination. Single-dose VEH declined over time during the study period, especially in the older age group. Estimates were sensitive to possible errors in the population count used to determine the residual number of unvaccinated people when vaccine coverage is high. CONCLUSIONS The Costa Rican vaccination program that administered Pfizer and Oxford vaccines are highly effective to prevent COVID-19-related hospitalizations after the Delta variant had become dominant. Moreover, a single dose is reasonably effective, justifying the continuation of the national policy of postponing the application for the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine to accelerate the vaccination and increase the number of people being vaccinated. Timely monitoring of vaccine effectiveness is important to detect eventual failures and motivate the public based on information that the vaccinations are effective.

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Checklist and key of New World species of Omiodes Guenée with descriptions of four new Costa Rican species (Lepidoptera: Crambidae)

Insect Systematics & Evolution ◽

10.1163/187631297x00295 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 28 (4) ◽

pp. 471-492 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Patricia Gentili ◽

M. Alma Solis

Keyword(s):

New Species ◽

Costa Rica ◽

Type Species ◽

New World ◽

Costa Rican ◽

New Combination ◽

World Species

AbstractOmiodes Guenée is redescribed based on all New World species, including the type species O. humeralis Guenée. Four new species from Costa Rica, O. janzeni sp. n., O. hallwachsae sp. n., O. sirena sp. n., O. ochracea sp. n., are described. Ten new synonymies are established : Phostria disciiridescens Hampson is =O. croeceiceps (Walker), Phostria cayennalis Schaus is =O. grandis (Druce), Omiodes ochrosoma Felder & Rogenhofer and Phryganodes gazalis Schaus are =O. pandaralis (Walker), Nacoleia lenticurvalis Hampson, Phryganodes anchoritalis Dyar, and Phostria duplicata Kaye are =O. confusalis (Dognin), O. cervinalis Amsel is =O. martvralis (Lederer), Nacoleia indicata ab. pigralis Dognin and Botis fortificalis Möschler are =O. metricalis (Möschler). One new combination is recognized: O. pandaralis (Walker) was transferred from Coelorhynchidia Hampson. A key and an updated checklist to the neotropical Omiodes species is provided, including O. indicata (Fabricius), a worldwide pest. Ten species that do not belong in Omiodes are retained until appropriate generic placements are identified.

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Assessing Suitable Habitats for Treefrog Species after Previous Declines in Costa Rica

Diversity ◽

10.3390/d13110577 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (11) ◽

pp. 577

Author(s):

Héctor Zumbado-Ulate ◽

Catherine L. Searle ◽

Gerardo Chaves ◽

Víctor Acosta-Chaves ◽

Alex Shepack ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Costa Rica ◽

Sympatric Species ◽

Costa Rican ◽

Suitable Habitat ◽

Minimum Convex Polygon ◽

Amphibian Species ◽

Environmental Threats ◽

The Status ◽

Suitable Habitats ◽

Iucn Assessment

Treefrogs represent 22% of amphibian species in Costa Rica, but gaps in the knowledge about this group of amphibians can impede conservation efforts. In this study, we first updated the status of Costa Rican treefrogs and found that a total of 38% of treefrog species are threatened according to the most recent IUCN assessment in 2019. Additionally, 21% of Costa Rican treefrog species have a high vulnerability to extinction according to environmental vulnerability scores. Then, we predicted the historical climatic suitability of eight target species that we expected to have exhibited changes in their ranges in the last 20 years. We assessed the location of new occurrence records since 2000 to identify recovery, range expansion, or previously underestimated ranges due to methodological limitations. We also estimated the area of each species’ suitable habitat with two metrics: extent of suitable habitat (ESH) and area of minimum convex polygon (AMCP). Six declined species exhibited recovery (i.e., new occurrences across historical range after 2000), with the widest recovery found in Agalychnis annae. We also found that Isthmohyla pseudopuma appears to have spread after the decline of sympatric species and that the range of I. sukia was originally underestimated due to inadequate detection. We found that the ESH was 32–49% smaller than the AMCP for species that are slowly recovering; however, the ESH is similar or greater than the AMCP for species that are recovering in most of their ranges, as well as rare species with widespread ranges. Results of this work can be used to evaluate the risk of environmental threats and prioritize regions for conservation purposes.

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Combining Leaf Shape and Texture for Costa Rican Plant Species

CLEI electronic journal ◽

10.19153/cleiej.19.1.7 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Jose Carranza-Rojas ◽

Erick Mata-Montero

Keyword(s):

Costa Rica ◽

Tree Species ◽

Leaf Shape ◽

Costa Rican ◽

Automatic Identification ◽

Leaf Margin ◽

Best Value ◽

Candidate Species ◽

Image Dataset ◽

Northeast Us

In the last decade, research in Computer Vision has developed several algorithms to help botanists and non-experts to classify plants based on images of their leaves. LeafSnap is a mobile application that uses a multiscale curvature model of the leaf margin to classify leaf images into species. It has achieved high levels of accuracy on 184 tree species from Northeast US. We extend the research that led to the development of LeafSnap along two lines. First, LeafSnap’s underlying algorithms are applied to a set of 66 tree species from Costa Rica. Then, texture is used as an additional criterion to measure the level of improvement achieved in the automatic identification of Costa Rica tree species. A 25.6% improvement was achieved for a Costa Rican clean image dataset and 42.5% for a Costa Rican noisy image dataset. In both cases, our results show this increment as statistically significant. Further statistical analysis of visual noise impact, best algorithm combinations per species, and best value of k , the minimal cardinality of the set of candidate species that the tested algorithms render as best matches is also presented in this research.

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Bone fractures in roadkill Northern Tamandua Tamandua mexicana (Mammalia: Pilosa: Myrmecophagidae) in Costa Rica

Journal of Threatened Taxa ◽

10.11609/jott.4956.11.14.14802-14807 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (14) ◽

pp. 14802-14807

Author(s):

Randall Arguedas ◽

Elisa C. López ◽

Lizbeth Ovares

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Costa Rica ◽

Bone Fractures ◽

Costa Rican ◽

The Body ◽

The Future ◽

Tamandua Mexicana

Northern Tamandua Tamandua mexicana is one of the most common roadkill species encountered on Costa Rican highways. Ten roadkill Northern Tamanduas were collected along different roads in Costa Rica and moved to a veterinary facility where appendicular radiologic studies were undertaken. The number of fractures present in each individual varied from zero to five (mean=2.6), with only one animal sustaining no fractures at all. Most fractures were present in the humerus (31%), followed by the ulna and ilium (both 19%), whilst the cranial portion of the body represented the highest number of fractures (61%). These data can contribute, not only to establishing causes of animal-road-mortalities, but also to the future understanding and decision-making of clinical actions for animals injured on the roads.

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Adherence and its impact on the reduction of lipid peril of patients seen in the form of telemedicine at a state university in Costa Rica

UNED Research Journal ◽

10.22458/urj.v7i2.1137 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 137-142

Author(s):

Karla Rojas Suárez ◽

Lourdes Rojas Espinoza

Keyword(s):

Cardiovascular Disease ◽

Costa Rica ◽

Total Cholesterol ◽

Age Groups ◽

Costa Rican ◽

State University ◽

Test Results ◽

Adherence To Treatment ◽

Cholesterol Levels ◽

Laboratory Results

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Costa Rica is no exception, with high levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in all age groups, and lack of adherence to treatment as one of the main challenges. We analyze the variation in test results of lipid pro le in one control and one telemedicine group in the staff of a Costa Rican university. We followed 62 patients aged 20-70 years, with tests done after fasting 12 hours, and 6 months to a year between samples. A questionnaire was used to calculate rates of factors that affect the variation in laboratory results. The patients had greater commitment to self care in the telemedicine group, achieving a reduction in total cholesterol levels, with little or no variation in other lipoproteins, and a slight increase in triglyceride levels.

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A regional Stokes-Helmert geoid determination for Costa Rica (GCR-RSH-2020): computation and evaluation

Contributions to Geophysics and Geodesy ◽

10.31577/congeo.2020.50.2.3 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 50 (2) ◽

pp. 223-247

Author(s):

Jaime GARBANZO-LEÓN ◽

Alonso VEGA FERNÁNDEZ ◽

Mauricio VARELA SÁNCHEZ ◽

Juan Picado SALVATIERRA ◽

Robert W. KINGDON ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Costa Rica ◽

Gravity Data ◽

Accurate Determination ◽

Costa Rican ◽

Geopotential Model ◽

Geoid Model ◽

Satellite Gravity ◽

Common Solution ◽

The Difference ◽

The University

GNSS observations are a common solution for outdoor positioning around the world for coarse and precise applications. However, GNSS produces geodetic heights, which are not physically meaningful, limiting their functionality in many engineering applications. In Costa Rica, there is no regional model of the geoid, so geodetic heights (h) cannot be converted to physically meaningful orthometric heights (H). This paper describes the computation of a geoid model using the Stokes-Helmert approach developed by the University of New Brunswick. We combined available land, marine and satellite gravity data to accurately represent Earth's high frequency gravity field over Costa Rica. We chose the GOCO05s satellite-only global geopotential model as a reference field for our computation. With this combination of input data, we computed the 2020 Regional Stokes-Helmert Costa Rican Geoid (GCR-RSH-2020). To validate this model, we compared it with 4 global combined geopotential models (GCGM): EGM2008, Eigen6C-4, GECO and SGG-UM-1 finding an average difference of 5 cm. GECO and SGG-UM-1 are more similar to the GCR-RSH-2020 based on the statistics of the difference between models and the shape of the histogram of differences. The computed geoid also showed a shift of 7 cm when compared to the old Costa Rican height system but presented a slightly better fit with that system than the other models when looking at the residuals. In conclusion, GCR-RSH-2020 presents a consistent behaviour with the global models and the Costa Rican height systems. Also, the lowest variance suggests a more accurate determination when the bias is removed.

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